Deborah Preston, Byron Bay
I appreciate many people are currently homeless and still processing the trauma of extreme loss from the floods. I am finding the community support we have for each other in this time profoundly moving to experience.
However, I am also beginning to see the opportunity for co-creating ‘the new’ from this devastating loss of ‘the old’. I believe there are more tough times ahead and feel strongly the time to build ‘the new’ is now.
We have many people in our Shire who are pioneers in creating a new way of doing things. Visionaries who have thought through and developed new ways for humanity to do things differently in many areas – our buildings, our food systems, our community interaction, our education system, our transport and energy systems, our economic systems, our health and wellbeing. These people are emerging as leaders from the ground up. Leaders who can empower us to shift towards the new, as our old structures break down.
We also have progressive leaders in Council and government doing what they can to create a more sustainable and just future, but these systems move slowly – as we have seen. Let’s use the support and resources available from these sources to build it back green. Let’s use these emerging leaders to work from the ground up as well as the top down.
Let’s not just recover. Let’s be leaders in building ‘the new’.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
