E81 Megan O'Malley - Dancing and walking her way to a new education vision for the next world

A story teller for change, voice for young people and founder of Humiform. Megan became a professional dancer at 14, a fair fashion advocate who walked across South East Asia to share stories of good in her early 20’s and now has turned her efforts to working with kids in a way that gives them agency and a connection to the outside world. She speaks not only from her lived experience but also from a place of realness that is easily relatable and that kids gravitate towards. She asks ‘what if’, and walks her talk. 

Episode Summary

• Changing her view of the world through the lens of passionate social and environmental activist kids
• Giving kids the chance to drive their own projects 
• Do screens change our kids worlds
• Having parents who trusted her 100%
• Starting a full time dance career at 14 until she was 27
• Cruise ships are a microcosm of the real world where inequality is prevalent and impossible to ignore
• Leaving cruise ships once she realised her white privilege
• Why it’s so hard to live your values when the systems are set up to maintain status quo. 
• The difficulty in finding time to appreciate nuances especially in the fashion industry
• The inconvenience of nuances in marketing
• Looking to nature for the diverse solutions and embracing it 
• Young people are the way forward because they JUST GET IT 
• Young people are powerful. They see the interconnectedness of the world
• The future our children face is vastly different to the world we faced
• Coming to terms with knowing that the world is going to change and there will be loss
• Acknowledging that change has always happened and being ok to be part of the adaptation
• Building a  business as a force for good
• Businesses  taking action where the government is not to create deep change 
• Businesses need to give back to the world rather than just taking
• The loneliness of being an edge dweller in the things she chooses to do
• The education system is a dinosaur 
• Avoiding projects that perpetuate the white saviour mentality
• Walk Sew Good - her walk across South East Asia to share stories about people creating good fashion stories
• 15k kg of clothing goes to landfill every 10 minutes in Australia
• If we were as connected to our clothing as the people she met on her walk it could change the world. 
• Creating a space for kids that have no rules
• Her vision of an education system 
• We don’t know what the world is going to look like in the future so who are we to dictate what our kids should be learning
• We need to ask “what is the purpose for education in our time” 
•  Be obsessed with not knowing things and let your thinking be challenged

References

The good place - Netflix series.

Humiform 

Walk Sew Good

What if- Rob Hopkins

Thanks to our podcast partners:

Wwoof Australia

Nutrisoil

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