- Deane Belfield, Business Shaper
Engineers have the opportunity to play a significant role in the emerging ecological age as it is engineers who create and build many of the solutions society is reliant on. But it is not just about technology. It is about linking head, heart and hands to provide the most enduring and valuable outcomes and provide effective and heart-felt fixes to many of the global problems created by western industrialised practices.
Indigenous people of South America (and Australia), who still live in their traditional Earth-honoring ways, refer to our modern worldview as our “dream” and have urged us, for the sake of all life, to “change the dream of the modern world”.
It is clear that continuing to think and act as we have in the past won’t provide long-term global political and environmental security. Be the Change (www.BetheChange.org.au) is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to inspiring ordinary people to take far greater responsibility for the human condition and our shared future, to evoke the next level of democracy.
In Australia, Be the Change deliver the ‘Awakening the Dream’ Symposium to business and community groups of all kinds. The Symposium is a result of a compelling request from the leaders of several remote indigenous groups in the Amazon basin to “change the dream” of our modern culture and “awaken from the consumer trance and restore harmony with Mother Earth”.
The Symposium explores the state of our planet from a new perspective, connecting participants with a powerful global movement to reclaim our future. Participants explore the link between three of humanity’s most critical concerns: environmental sustainability, social justice and spiritual fulfillment.
Over 50,000 people have participated in symposiums, and since October 2006 over 3,000 people have participated in Australia. The global vision for the next five years is for 100 million people to attend and for thousands of Australian symposium leaders to be trained and share the message of connection, possibility, community and committed action.
Some global leaders behind the Symposium (such as Van Jones) are now direct advisers to Barack Obama and Paul Hawken describes Be the Change as the “most important not-for-profit on the planet today.”
BIOS:
Deane Belfield is co-founder and Partner of Business Shaper. He is also a Director and facilitator of the Be the Change Symposiums here in Australia, where over 3,000 people across Australia have experienced this profound environmental sustainability transformational experience. Previously Deane worked with a number of blue-chip global companies for many years before setting up PricewaterhouseCoopers’ climate change practice. He has led many projects across Asia- Pacific related to business and process improvement, operational and resource efficiency, sustainability, strategy, performance ratings systems, environmental systems, climate change, greenhouse gas emission reduction and energy efficiency.
Deane is the incoming chair of the National Board for the Society for Sustainability and Environmental Engineers and a member of the Pachamama Alliance global leadership team.
Whilst passionate about transformational change and his facilitation role within both the corporate and community sectors, Deane combines this with his specialty in integrating of carbon management and sustainability into core businesses and all stages of the supply chain - recognising that the catalyst is allowing people to first ‘be the change they want to see in the world’.