Leaving a Legacy

Leaving a Legacy

How do you create a legacy? First focus on the work not the goal and invest the time. Phil Stenhouse OAM discusses how he created Bridge Builders Youth Charity which has helped more than 60,000 young people connect to a community that helps them feel loved, supported and unleashes their inner leader.

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Charlotte Pascoe:

I am so excited to be able to welcome this man to the stage. Phil is somebody that I came across three years ago. We were looking for a charity that we wanted to support as our network and there were a lot of big ticket items, big companies that were very familiar.

We wanted to get down into the grassroots which I truly believe reflects what our business is within Victoria and we were recommended to meet Phil. The moment I met him and stepped inside this charity I felt something, which is why I knew in that first moment that this is exactly who we want to support.

Phil is an incredible human. He has an Order of Australia so it's not just me that thinks he's incredible. He gets a little bit embarrassed when I say they have helped 64,000 youths across Victoria. 64,000, which I believe is something that is, well, probably unlike anyone else.

But I'm going to invite Phil Stenhouse up to the stage from Bridge Builders. Now I have to let you all know we've established that Phil is a talker, which means he talks and walks. So we've opted not to sit because he doesn't think he can sit and talk.

Phil Stenhouse:

So we're going to stand here and have this conversation. That's I am a talker so I like to walk and talk and I know that Charlotte's a hands person. Now Nick said earlier that a quote that I really liked, the hardest thing is to buy a jar of confidence and it really resonated with Phil because you don't have to buy a jar of confidence.

Charlotte Pascoe:

Phil gives jars of confidence to people every day, to kids, so that they've got a different future. So I wanted to start with that and link it through and say you can't buy one but Phil does a bloody good job of giving it to the kids. So I've got a couple of things to keep us on track.

Phil and I are very good talkers, he talks more than me, I didn't think it was possible. But Phil I'm going to ask you to tell your story, what got you here, your story, the Bridge Builders piece and then obviously getting the Order of Australia.

Phil Stenhouse:

Awesome, thanks Charlotte, really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for taking a few moments. Hopefully in the next 19 minutes and four seconds I can add some value to you and that's great that that's there because that means nothing to me. So if you're in real estate or if you're in youth work it's the same, it means nothing, but we'll be on track.

So how did it all start? So I worked out the other day, I kept saying to people, I've been doing youth work for over 30 years. I actually worked out the other day that it's actually been 44 years that I've been doing youth work. So you look at me and say, yeah it shows.

So when I was 14 years old I was a street kid, so I ran on the street and my parents, bad upbringing, blah blah blah, so what, you know that's the story, that's a history, not our future.

So at 14 I was faced in a situation where I was surrounded by another group of youths that probably didn't appreciate me so much and I was faced with a moment that was like, this is it, this is where I exit the planet or I'm going to change my life. And it was right at that moment when I was 14 that I knew that I wanted to dedicate my life to helping young people, be there for my mates.

And so that began the journey of Bridge Builders, where did the name come from? It's simple, it's really simple—build a bridge, get over it. So that's what we wanted to do: build into the lives of young people over the last 44 years.

How could we take a young person from a place of—if I use some language in your vernacular, which is assets—how could I build assets in a young person over a period of time, so that when they left our organisation or moved on or grew up or grew out, that they would be a better human for it?

So after 44 years that's what we've been doing, and of course the number does sound large but there's a big team involved.

So in 2000 we decided to establish Bridge Builders. People asked me—one of the guys asked me out there—why did you start the charity? Because it was so easy to look and observe at the things that were going on in the youth space and just criticise what government was doing, criticise what other people were doing.

So we thought, you know what, why do we do that? Why don't we just go and actually make a difference ourselves, add our bit, you know.

When we established Bridge Builders in 2000, formally in 2002, this coming Friday is our 23 years as a charity. We're not government funded—so I made that decision right from the start that we weren't going to be government funded at all. We were going to go our own way, raise our own funds, do our own things.

So we teach young people leadership and development skills. Leadership and legacy is really in our wheelhouse and it has been, and we've done multiple programs.

And so the OAM side of things was a surprise in 2014. I had designed over 90 programs in schools throughout Victoria for leadership development and it was all about how you could take a young person from disbelief into belief in themselves and then move on into their world and how that would impact the community.

At the end of the day it was about, if this was my kid. So I'm now 58, and a few of you were saying this morning you have children. I have children but they just happen to be grown children and they are 30 and 32.

Magnificent, incredibly handsome young men, you know. They represent their mother more than me, you know. And so they are beautiful.

One of my sons is in business with me—so I have multiple businesses—and then my other son is a police officer in Lakes Entrance. Magnificent, and he looks so hot in uniform.

I did get caught one time—I know we're off track—but I did get caught one time trying on his uniform and he came home and he said, you know, it's an offence and I said, mm-mm, arrest me, you know. Anyway,

Charlotte Pascoe:

So yesterday we had a session about it being about the kids and we all shared, we heard a couple of pretty incredible stories of what people in the room have been through and I thought it's probably a good thing to kind of come back to.

The changes—you've been doing this for a long time, over the last let’s say 20, 23 years—what changes have you seen with youths?

So in terms of behaviours, mental health, what do you think are the big challenges that are facing the kids? Because those are the kids, be it in a good environment or a not-so-great environment, they're the kids that are coming into our workforce.

So what sorts of things do you think are the challenges of the up-and-comers?

Phil Stenhouse:

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question because I actually did a—this is not a plug—but I did a study on the generational differences.

A few of you threw out what you think you are—in the Millennials and Gen X's and Gen Y's and what have you. I actually did a whole study on this and presented it to businesses about understanding the next generations so you could figure out what was important to them and how to retain and sustain those young people as they moved into and through your business.

And what was important to them, what was important to you, and how the two were never going to meet—and how you needed to develop and grow as a person.

One of the key things for us in the last five years—and we can blame COVID, you can blame whatever—but the fact is that that just magnified the issue of isolation and social isolation.

So we talk about Stolen Focus—a great book out there by Johann Hari. If you haven't ever seen that, you'll never use your phone the same way again, I can guarantee you.

But we took our entire leadership team through a process of understanding what is the stolen focus of young people and how could we get their focus back again.

Then isolation during COVID became paramount and so we used Zoom—like everybody was doing that and became Zoom junkies—and we created this idea every single week we would send out a parcel and it was called Operation Gotcha.

So all of our young people that we're involved with—we deal with over 200 young people per week—we would send them out care parcels through the post, right, snail mail.

We’d figure out these great things they could do, send it out to them, keep them engaged. So when they were on Zoom they were building—you know, for some of us that are old enough, you remember Pet Rocks, before we could afford pets, you know—you get to have a pet rock.

Well we sent them all of the stuff they needed to make a pet rock and then we did a fashion parade on Zoom with our pet rocks to keep young people engaged.

Funnily enough, parents and grandparents all got involved in making pet rocks too, which was just awesome. So it had all these consequences from that.

Our underpinning thing—so we had lunch today and on your plate—we work on a process called the 40 Developmental Strategies.

We have looked at research from the Search Institute in the States, they did a study of three million young people across the planet and identified that these 40 building blocks were necessary in the development of a young person—or any human.

So we thought, well what could we do to present that plate as a young person? So everything that we do, every event, every engagement we had, had to have the ability to develop assets in young people.

So it's called the 40 Developmental Assets. If you look it up online it'll blow your mind. You do the little survey, you'll figure out how deficient we are as parents—and what that does then to our young people or our children.

And then figure out what environments we need to be put in. So when you guys were talking earlier about mentoring and development and putting teams around you—I don't know all your acronyms, I'm not real estate, I only have one, you know, so that's it at the moment.

So the whole idea for us is that the 40 Developmental Assets was all about how we could build into the life of a young person that we were given the privilege of being entrusted with.

They're your kids, right? So they're your kids and I had to look at it with my kids as well. If this was my kids, what environment could we create that could actually build an asset into that young person that was sustainable through their life?

So it wasn't just a come along and feel good and play computer games—it was like what asset could we develop in them?

I know you had one of the girls yesterday that was a psychologist—talks about brain stuff, for me is brilliant—because I teach young people about their brain and how it lies to them at times.

And the fundamental human need that psychologists have analysed is: love, value, acceptance, and belonging.

They're the four fundamental human needs. Every single one of you in this room—I don't care what age you are—so generationally, when you look at what's affecting young people: love, value, acceptance, and belonging.

You and them will do whatever it takes to get those needs met. They'll do legal and illegal things, moral and immoral things to have those four fundamental things met.

A couple of the guys this morning—and girls—were talking about belonging, right? That's important. How do you create belonging?

Very important. Why? Because it's one of the core needs of the human condition. So that's so much so in young people.

Now between the ages of 13—so I think 18 to 13—we're talking about formative moments yesterday, I think you were talking about—they're pivotal.

We have to understand all this science, you know.

And then from 13 to 24, the brain develops in two different stages. You got a second? We'll do this in 30 seconds.

You've got 9 minutes and 56 seconds. 30 seconds, I'll give you this. This adds value to you.

So this is how you understand your young people, right? Their brain develops in two different stages—right?

The emotional brain first. That, for a young person, develops between the ages of 13 to 23.

For a bloke, it sort of slows down a little bit, you know, and sort of takes a little longer for a fella's brain.

So logic in the front, emotion in the back. So when you look at a young person, you wonder, why are they doing what they're doing—your kids or anybody else's kids—why are they doing what they're doing?

The whole idea there is that they feel first, before they think.

So you say to your young person, your kid, "What were you thinking?" What's their response? "I don't know. I don’t know. I didn't hurt anybody. I felt okay."

Feeling.

A different way to talk to your kids as a parent is: "How did that make you feel?" You'll engage with your kids overnight if you just change the way that you think to understand how they feel. You'll become a totally different parent. Changed my life as a parent.  And anyway, we kept going. Ding.

Charlotte Pascoe:

Good thing though, when you are talking to the younger generation in your office, is asking, well when this happened, how did you feel? So I think it's probably, particularly with the younger people coming in, we've all got people who are under 23 in our business, so maybe something there.

Initiatives, the My Kids Postie Bike Ride is probably one of them and we'll just go into that one, because then there's a couple of other bits and pieces, but do you want to talk about the My Kids?

Phil's always trying to find ways to fundraise and this is a great one.

Phil Stenhouse:

30 seconds, great, the My Kids Postie Bike Ride is simply, we ride postie bikes for five days, 1500 K's, easy, you know, so I'm a motorcycle rider, have been and so have my kids their whole life, so we thought, what could we do, let's ride postie bikes, because that was a smart move, you know and so a whole bunch of men and women who ride, let's call it that, or want to ride, are coming on again, every two years we run a Postie Bike Ride and it's called the My Kids Postie Bike Ride and somebody said to me the other week, why do you call it the My Kids, because here's the thing, a mentor taught me 35 years ago and I've never forgotten it, he said if you do something for me, I'll thank you, but if you do something for my kids, I'll never forget you.

I want that, I want to do something for someone's kids that they never forget, because that's worth more than anything. If I have to ride a postie bike for five days and 1500 K's, we just have some incredible conversations along the way with some incredible business people and some just humans, just incredible humans and find out what their life is, so that's where the My Kids Postie Bike comes from and it's next May, we're going, so get on your posters and come with us.

Charlotte Pascoe:

The two cent theory, I love this, can you go through these for a couple of minutes. So there's two cents, so those of us, how many of you understand my two cents worth, you know when somebody says that's my two cents worth, you know if you're a bit older to Bob, I don't know what Bob meant, you know I think it means 10 cents or 20 cents, I'm only joking, I know what exactly what it means, but so the two cents is this, a few years ago I thought to myself, somebody put some two cent coins on my desk and I thought these are not of value, it's going to make, could make me cry at this point because it does every time and we've been using this for 20 years.

They put this two cent coins, I thought I'm going to put it out there on Facebook and see who has two cent coins, so I got this inundated with two cent coins, everybody had two cent coins, I thought this is fantastic, so I took it to the bank because I thought it must be worth something, so I went to the bank and I said this has, you know Mr. Bank person, this is Macquarie, so I went to the bank and I said this has, you know Mr. Bank person, this is Macquarie, so I took the two cents to the bank and I was with Beck, our co-director of the charity and I said to the lady I just want to know what these two cents are worth and she and the lady behind the counter to this day, she said you know what you'd be better off doing, would be melting the copper down because the copper that's in the coins is worth more than the coin itself, literally I stood in the bank and I said just give me those coins back for a moment, Beck's going what's going on, I turned to her and I got tears rolling down my face, I said this is a self-esteem campaign.

She said what do you mean, I said imagine if we could turn these two cent coins, sorry to Queen Elizabeth we put a hole through your face, so we took the two cents coins and we turned it into bracelets and necklaces and we made up a little card and we put on it, if you ever forget that you're not of value, just remember what's within, what's within you is worth more than what people see on the outside and that's my two cents worth.

And we gave these coins, we just gave them away to everybody that thought they had a kid or a grandchild or any kid that they knew that was struggling with self-harm or low self-esteem or whatever it was and they would give them this necklace and we could see these coins going around and bracelets for the fellows because lawyers couldn't wear that sort of jewelry around their neck, not then but now they can, and so the two cent campaign was all about that and that was our two, it was just a simple thing that had become worthless and how many of our kids that we deal with or engage just feel so worthless.

And imagine if you could give them a little gift or two cents and as a bracelet just to remind them every time and we've got dozens, hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of girls in particular that are self-harmers and we've moved them from that place to this place and so out of that of course stemmed our girls retreat which is Charlotte and the team at Stockies have been an incredible supporter and that deals with over 70 girls aged 13 to 15 every single year.

Bonnie who's one of our developed leaders after 10 years, she was a self-harming girl, you can see the strategies all over her arms, it was not a good strategy and legs, now she leads that and we've affected over 900 girls over 17 years that go away on a four-day retreat and corporate women come in and speak into the lives of these women and that's their two cents worth and it changes their lives.

Charlotte Pascoe:

The thing I love about Phil is he's always looking at ways that he can help, recently on an overseas trip I came away and I thought the one thing that I find incredible about other cultures is it's all you can have nothing but you spend your life trying to give and I feel like a lot of the time we get so caught up in what we need and what we've got to buy and what we can do to change and how we can improve our business and what am I doing and how are my kids going to get into a private school, how am I going to get a new car, there's a thousand things that run through your head.

And the biggest piece for me about all of this is every time I'm in your company I always think I need to be a better person, what else can I give and that's one thing that we have worked on together and that just for the last couple of minutes, what we wanted to talk to you about now is what you can do to help in a different way and when we were looking at different charities that we could support there are thousands, thousands upon thousands of charities, there are big target ticket names, there are smaller ones.

But I would urge everyone in the room to think what would it look like, so we were looking at Beyond Blue and I think the minimum sponsorship package is about a hundred grand, so when I met Phil he was like now just playing it cool we need to select you, I now know him and I know he was like yes we've got another sponsor but he played it cool, their top package was five grand and so our conversation wasn't about the money it was about the three things you talk about in cash, in kind and in person and that's been a really big driver of our partnership.

It's not about how do I give you money so you can go and do things, we have spent a lot of time with the team at Bridge Builders and what he has built is so humbling to be in that space of, so on a Monday night all the kids can go into a safe space and they can get food and they can do their homework and it's somewhere you know you sit down with some of these kids and remember sitting down next to one at the dinner at the retreat and she was reeling off like a supermarket list all of her mental health issues.

And then went into the fact that she loves being there because it gives her three days, four days away from her father who is abusing her mum but the reason that she can't kick him out is because he's suicidal so mum is carrying this guilt that if she kicks him out he's gonna kill himself it's gonna be her so he keeps him in the house so she gets three or four days away and I remember just sitting there and I went up to Phil and I said how do you just not grab all of these kids and stick them in your car and take them somewhere else.

Well 64,000 children it's a big house you're gonna have to have but the thing that Phil talks a lot about is how do you give the tools and equip these people so they can have a life outside of what they would have ever imagined.

So one of the things we've done for the last minute and it's just to wrap up what we've done with Phil and I encourage you to all stop and think what can you do within your communities and how can you think outside the square so we sat down there were some kids who you know they came into our office and we created a work experience program.

So we said go and pick some kids that don't necessarily have people in this sphere right you talk about the four or five people that you're spending your most amount of time with if those four or five people have no desire to go and achieve something in life then that person regardless of what they have capacity and ability to do they won't do it so we're like how do we get them into our business.

We had our social media people we had our marketing people we had accounts we had admin we had property management sales I was like bring them all in there's another girl who wants to get into social media we like open up the doors just spend time doesn't matter what it is but it's very specific about giving these children an opportunity these youths particularly when they get into their 20s of seeing something outside of what's in their sphere.

So we speak at the retreat I'm doing the postie bike ride creating team red getting our network to donate $100 per transaction over a 12 month period they don't know it yet I'm gonna take them through that all those skills I've learned about I do now well no these aren't our network I haven't got there yet that's the next conversation.

I'm gonna take them through what I lose but the one thing that I do and we're out of time but the one thing I really do encourage you is my life is so much better I talked to my children about things that are not in the sphere I operate within.

My children are in a good school I live in a good house we've we've got a lot of nice things and so what my children experience and what we see every day is a bubble and there is a whole part of your community out there that you don't see you don't know it exists and it's in your backyard.

So I encourage you to go and find those things. Those initiatives can mean one hour of your time a week of your time, a donation of time.

Phil Stenhouse:

more important money's good I know 15 seconds they're going to put us off

Charlotte Pascoe:

no no we're already booted off oh we're going to the ..

Phil Stenhouse:

Time is actually more important and I know our time lady there before was freaking me out. I was freaking out down here. My brain was going a thousand miles now I think and I've got a list of the whole idea of giving you more valuable than giving you money.

One thing I will encourage you with research the charity that you get involved with 25% of the charities in Australia are fraudulent so make sure that they're accredited and make sure that they've got the tick of approval from the ACNC if you're going to go and research and give after give money or your time to a charity make sure it's credible.