A Place to Belong

Building a Community

I continually talk about the large group of young staff that we employ throughout our company, and the outstanding job they do – always some exceptions but overall, they do well! Also, there are more young women in our business these days – again, a great trend and a healthy change from the ‘old days.’

So I see what young people can achieve, given an opportunity within the right sort of environment.  Our business has outstanding leaders and supervisors who continually strive to maintain an encompassing and excellent company culture.

Contrary to this, Bowens experience with young people, the Victorian Community is tired of the car thefts, home invasions, street violence/bashings that are commonplace in our society today. Generally carried out by young, wayward individuals.

I’m past the excuses of ‘too young to know right from wrong’ and the drug-affected youth who ‘didn’t really know what he/she was doing.’ The leniency of our magistrates and courts means that the worst offenders are allowed to reoffend.

Sadly, the parents of these serial offenders are often not around or are incapable of controlling their children. But again, there is support out there – literally hundreds of registered charities and thousands of community groups dedicated to helping disadvantaged youth. Any parent can find an appropriate organisation that can fit specific needs. ACNC charity register is available to filter by location and sub-type (such as ‘advocacy education’ and ‘social welfare’).

Our own Jeff Harvey was recently honoured with an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia). A well-deserved award for a man who has given years of service within organisations like Rotary, St Vincent de Paul, the Catholic Church, the Fitzroy/Doncaster, Prahran, Oakleigh, Baxter and Frankston Peninsula Cricket clubs. Most of his attention was dedicated towards our youth and no doubt his care and mentoring would have changed the lives of many within his scope.

Jeff and Marilyn Harvey brought up three outstanding boys of their own and that is the best start, isn’t it – the influence of good, hardworking and loving parents creating an environment within the family home.

When I left school, I went immediately to the one branch Bowens had at the time – North Melbourne. I had the fortunate situation way back then, of having a number of senior people who cared for me, mentored me and taught me the right way to handle the basics of working hard, being honest and respectful of the people around me. Jeff Harvey started two years before me and was my work companion from day one. As Jeff has well and truly left his mark as a great ‘Bowens’ person, a great community participant, so too Wally Turner, Tom Kean, Jack Dowling, Brian Brasher, Dudley Parker, Rex Fenton, Brian Kennedy and my father – were all respected leaders and mentors of their time.

Newly out of school, both Jeff and I found our ‘Place to Belong to.’ A place that offered good values and fairness in what was a tough world to us at the time. Jeff can speak for himself, but I’m sure he also found a cricket world that offered another place to help him belong and build on and support his growth as a person. Belonging to a great workplace, a great working environment, is one giant step, but also finding other ‘interests’ that support personal all-round growth is important. Sport fits that mould perfectly.

John and Andy Bowen and I have been involved in an amateur football club for 60 plus years. There are 80-90 young men and women who come to this club every year – most will have a career path ahead of them, but in the meantime, they also need a Place to Belong – and our club is that place. Because I know this club well, I can guarantee to the parents of the new recruits that their children are in good hands. I often think that if only the misguided youth who roam our streets and cause all the grief could have had a similar place to belong, the world would be better off and the communities around Melbourne much safer than they are now.

I’d like to quote from an address a friend of mine, a School Principal, made a few years ago to his graduating class:

“Life is not simple, it is not straightforward, it is not neat and it is not linear. It is challenging, complex, full of contradictions and inadequacies, of injustices and mistruths. And just when you think you’ve got it, you don’t, when you think you’ve worked it out, you haven’t.

Which is to say that you will spend your entire lives in a world that is not perfect and you will need to navigate this imperfection, its imbalances, its negativity, its hostilities and polarisation, its lack of empathy and respect. But this is not to paint a bleak picture. It is simply acknowledging the realities of our world, realities that can, without check and reflection, chip away at your confidence, your positivity, your self-belief and your faith.”

What John and Andy Bowen need to think about is while continuing to build this wonderful Bowens business, they can only do so by attracting young people who have the ability and the willingness to make a difference – a difference of ‘good’ in their own lives and the same influence that others have built into Bowens over the last 130 plus years. The great man, Jack Dowling, who Jeff Harvey and I had the pleasure to know and work for, said to us that ‘people work much better than profit, because if you have the right people, then the profit will come.’

If Bowen & Pomeroy Pty Ltd want good people, it must continue to be ‘a Place to Belong.’