🌍 Circular economies, climate justice, and systems that don't exclude

Hello change makers,

I’m currently experiencing my most stressful move ever - 6 humans, many who’ve spent their adult life living in different places, moving into one space to support my adult sister who's profoundly disabled.

The logistics are exhausting, but the bigger challenge is that the world simply isn't designed for people like her. Instead of making do with systems that exclude her, we've decided to build our own. While we can't make the whole world accessible, we can transform spaces we can control to reimagine how we live together.

This process has reinforced something I've been thinking about a lot lately - there are fundamental differences between helping people survive systems that exclude them versus building news ones. This is why I joined Maslow - instead of helping people navigate a financial system designed to extract from them, we're building a new one.

This distinction keeps coming up when I look at social impact work more broadly. So many brilliant initiatives focus on rescue and relief. In this newsletter, we've often celebrated these programmes without always questioning what's creating the need for so much rescue in the first place.

As we return to this newsletter, that's the lens we're bringing to our coverage. You'll see us celebrating vital programmes alongside deeper questions about the systems they're operating within.

Because sometimes helping people means changing the world they're trying to navigate.

♻️ Building circular economies from the ground up 
Indosole transforms discarded tyres into sustainable footwear, now raising funds through Lend4Good to expand retail stores in Bali. Fifteen years of proving waste can become value. Support their Lend4Good campaign

🇦🇺 Redesigning Australia's economic foundations
Katherine Trebeck’s latest paper introduces practical steps toward a wellbeing economy, moving beyond isolated reforms to fundamental transformation.
Read ‘Heading Upstream’

🏠 Preventing homelessness before it starts
New Flinders University toolkit helps councils address housing insecurity at its roots rather than managing crisis. Access the toolkit

🏘️ Building resilient local economies
Helena Norberg-Hodge explores why localised economies might be our most effective response to global fragility. ‘Listen to Globalisation End Game’

⛽ Challenging gas dependency on the ASX
Sustainable Investment Exchange’s reveals the risky energy bet ASX companies are making, with uncertainties passed to investors. Read the analysis

🏋🏻‍♂️ Kane's balancing fellowships, research, and reps
Catch up with Kane here

• Earlier in the year Kane embarked on a 48-Day Systems Change Research Journey, then shared what he discovered. Listen on Spotify, Apple or Watch on YouTube.

• Awarded a Byron Fellowship Scholarship to support Maslow’s systems change agenda.

• He brought together a great team of 30 who’ve completed 28,315 (so far!) push-ups and so far raised $5,917 for Lifeline Victoria, watch the video here, or donate to The Spread Eagles here.

• Attending Katherine Trebeck’s lecture, Beyond Tweaks: Confronting the Economic Elephants in the Room, at Federal Square.

• The SIXer Mixer evening where the panel discussed the looming gas crisis, the deforestation that our large supermarket chains contribute to, and the efforts to protect an entire fish species.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, share it with a friend; if you missed the newsletter, hit reply and let me know.

-Hilary

PS. Help me get Kane sharing Maslow’s mission on more platforms, make suggestions here.

In case you missed it

• Sex, Drugs and Systemic Change: How Senate Candidate Fiona Patten is Changing Australian Politics → Join the conversation

• ‘How ‘smart’ investors are killing your future – and theirs too’ on StartUp Daily → Join the Conversation

• Hope for Humanity – Lessons from a 48-Day Global Systems Tour (Live in Conversation) → Join the conversation