I’ve just come home from a workshop conducted on behalf of the Adelaide City Council to develop a plan of action aimed at addressing the well being of young people living in the City of Adelaide.

I sense there is something fundamentally wrong with the whole approach. It seems so text-bookey! So politically correct, maybe? I don’t know…

I sit down for a late afternoon cup of tea to try and work out why I feel uneasy. Some music for ambience … how about the Doobie Brothers?

The fourth track has these lyrics:

You don’t know me but I’m your brother
I was raised here in this living hell
You don’t know my kind in your world
Fairly soon the time will tell.
You…telling me the things you’re gonna do for me
I ain’t blind and I don’t like what I think I see…

Chorus: Takin’ it to the streets…

Is it this ‘we’re doing this for you’ mindset that could be troubling me?

Could it be that we need to change our own attitudes, from the established ‘solving other peoples’ problems’, toward solidarity, empowerment and relationship-building, rather than more programs?