Life Hero: Jack Heath, Inspire Foundation

• Louise Kelly
• 13 November 2007
• Page 1 of 2 : single page

"We had a strong sense about the power of technology and its ability to transform lives". Photo credit: Olivia Martin-McGuire

When the Inspire Foundation kicked off, it came out of my experience of grief over my cousin who’d killed himself in pretty horrific circumstances, so it was very much responding to darkness in life. But then very early on it flipped, because it was, “Hang on a sec, let’s look at this another way: every young person who’s coming to an Inspire program is a young person who’s looking for hope and inspiration.”
This was in the mid 1990s, and we had a very strong sense about the power of technology and its ability to change and transform lives in a way that never existed before. When you combined that with the escalating rates of suicide, it was almost like there was just a compulsion that we had to
do something.
I spent time working in Thailand in the late 1980s with then-Australian Ambassador Richard Butler. He conveyed to me a faith that small groups of people could actually affect significant social change. It was a heady time, and I had a very strong sense that change was possible.
When I returned to Australia and worked for Prime Minister Keating a few years later, I learned that he, too, had a very strong vision about what he wanted to achieve for the country. I witnessed again the sense that things could be changed: that people could make a difference. You could have a vision about something, but it was really about setting out to achieve it.

Be good at what you do
I’d have to say that the most important mentor and guide in my life is a Tibetan monk in Balmain, Sydney. After I moved to Sydney in ’96, I’d become addicted to meditation, and all I wanted to do was get that feeling again. But at the same time, I had a family. I went to this monk with what I thought was a completely irreconcilable choice between family and spiritual destiny, and he very gently told me to get a life, get real, and maybe family was my spiritual destiny.
One of the things this monk said, right from the beginning, was that when you start off on your ventures it is important to have a really strong core, to have a strong fire to start with, and that you grow from that. And that advice very much echoes what happened when we started Inspire with our Board of Directors. We had Michael Rennie, who’d been running the Greenpeace Foundation, and Alexandra Yuille, who’d been Telstra Businesswoman of the Year, and their advice was along similar lines: be really good at what you do, have a strong base, and grow from that.

See technology in a different light
In 1995, I participated in an online chat session with 30 people around the world and I put the question, “Surely we could use internet technology for something good, rather than just making money,” and the immediate response was “Absolutely.” I contacted Daniel Petri, who was working at Microsoft at the time, and he said, “You talk about youth suicide, why don’t you do something about it using the net?”
I was listening to the radio this morning and they were saying that 98% of young people in urban areas had access to technology. Technology’s got a way of reaching people that never existed before. There’s this opportunity to have such a profound impact and it’s about, “How do we line those things up, how do we get the resources to put that in place?”
All that we do is done via technology, so technology enables us to reach further than any other service ever could. So when we work with young people, yes, we do stuff online, but we also work with small groups of young people who we choose from all around Australia. Because of the anonymity of the net, there’s no stigma to applying for something and not getting it because no-one’s going to know.
A couple of weeks ago we launched a program called Reach Out Central, which puts behavioural therapy into an online gaming environment to try and attract more young men. I think we’re on the beginning of something that’s got quite extraordinary application, because you can construct any number of scenarios for different environments, and it’s about getting people to reflect on their thinking and how the choices they make actually impact on their mental health.

Plan for the future and step up
In 2002, we did a five-year-plan to map out where Inspire might be in 2007. Basically we said we’d be operating in two or three countries and we’d have a staff of about 30 or 40, and it’s transpired that we’re pretty close to doing that. We recently set up an organisation in the US, and we’ve just been asked to do a feasibility study in Ireland.
I had this moment of sheer horror in the States when I thought I couldn’t do something and I’d look like an absolute fool and I was stupid and all that. I said to myself, “I’m going to try and do this anyway,” and I ended up being able to do it. It was almost like being given permission to have big dreams and to pursue things.
One of the things I still get a bit of a gripe about is that in Australia we love to talk about punching above our weight. It’s almost like we’d rather stay in a lower class and be known for punching above our weight than actually bulking up and stepping up into the next level and taking on a much bigger challenge.
When we go to the States, for example, people say, “This is a totally different setting, there are strong racial groups.” Well, fine, we’ll just use the same principles we did here. We’ll just go out and talk to those young people and find out what works for them. So it comes again from this belief in people’s ability to deal with adversity and do great things.

Hold on to your vision
I think that often your links to people are actually a lot closer than you might realise, and obviously things like LinkedIn are proof of that. But what I like with people who are entrepreneurial is that they have a picture of the future: they can see it, and they will go every which way they can to realise it. So I believe that if the vision is strong and truly held, you will find the resources in your midst.
In terms of building your network of influence, it’s actually about looking really closely at who it is that you know. If they can’t help you, odds are there’ll be someone else who can help you with what you need. Look to your existing network and go and test with them. If there’s a gap or something you need, have them try and find that for you.
The other thing that I’d say is about mentors. Part of it is actually getting other people around who have a slightly different perspective to you, to get you to think about how it is that you might connect with different people. Usually the networks will be there, and with the tools that are on the web, our ability to connect with the people that we need is a lot closer than we might think.