Rites of Passage with Dr. Arne Rubinstein

In this episode with Arne Rubinstein we will be discussing the key elements of having sustainable, meaningful relationships with your children through the various stages of their life and the importance of elders in the community to guide you in your adult life.  There is also a special offer for the Rites of Passage Institute's transformational parenting online course.

In this interview Arne discusses:

• Four steps to having better relationships with your children
• The importance of the relationship with grandparents
• How elders in the community can play an important role
• The courses available through the Rites of Passage Institute.

I am sure that you will get something out of listening to this interview with Arne, he puts a lot of energy into his interview, as he does his life.
Please feel free to drop us a comment on the episode or via our social media sites.

Don't forget to look into the special offer on the transformational parenting course and have a look at the five minute Youtube - Bringing Back the Butchulla (See below)

Bio - Dr. Arne Rubinstein (mbbs, fracgp)

Founder & CEO, The Rites of Passage Institute

Arne Rubinstein is an internationally recognised expert on childhood development and rites of passage.
His programs have been attended by more than 200,000 people in more than 20 countries around the world and are now a part of over 50 schools around Australia.

Dr Arne is a medical doctor and specialised first in family medicine and then spent 15 years in emergency medicine until he moved full time, creating programs for parents and their children.

He is the author of the best-seller The Making of Men and has won multiple awards for his work, including being nominated in 2008 for Australian of the Year for his groundbreaking work with youth, providing much-needed answers and tools to support a generation of young men and women be happy and motivated about life.

Dr Arne is the proud father of two wonderful young men and a mentor to many others.

Links and free offer

To got to Rites of Passage website

Click on link to watch this fantastic Youtube video titled Bringing Back the Butchulla 

Transformational Parenting Ecourse can be found through the link below:
https://ropi.teachable.com/p/transformational-parenting/

Coupon information available from Beaming Green website under episode notes

Transcript

Jeremy Melder: 0:00

Hello, my name is Jeremy Melder, and I'm the presenter from beaming green. Before we start, I would like to acknowledge that this podcast is being held on the traditional lands of the bundjalung people and paying our respects to elders both past, present and emerging. The beaming green podcast is a weekly podcast, which will help you to take out some of the stress and confusion about how to live your life more sustainably. Can we do this by introducing you to people that have first hand experience and expertise in all aspects of sustainability. So you can get some amazing insights of how you can implement simple and practical solutions to enhance your life and the lives of your family. I hope you will indulge me for a few minutes today. As I would like to pay tribute to Claire Kelly, who is my mother in law who died from Lewy body dementia and Parkinson's disease on Monday, the 21st of September. Over the last five to six years, Claire's health declined considerably. And he and her sister Lisa shared this care for their mother until she was no longer able to travel between Melbourne and northern New South well, Claire came and stayed with us permanently over the two years and my partner cared for her until it became difficult to give her the kind of care she needed, and she had to be placed in a home and nursing home that was close to us. I want to acknowledge the amazing efforts. My partner Andrea provided her mother with loving care and support. I know that her mother was extremely proud and grateful. Due to the covid 19 restrictions. Lisa, her sister and family were not able to be with us to share the last part of Claire's journey. I'm sure there are lots of people that feel saddened by the fact that they were not able to be with their loved ones. At this sacred time. I was feeling that I should not be doing this pre recorded interview with Anna Rubenstein. But I thought it fitting as Ana has recently lost his loving mother. And the interview is about his rites of passage Institute, about family and honoring elders. To me Claire was a kind, loving and generous woman who was passionate about the environment. So passionate that she took her kids on protest marches. Claire loved her classical music, playing the oboe and devouring a good book. Claire was the loving mother to Lisa and India, my partner and grandmother to Tasha Annie and and she was also very generous to a son in laws. Anton and myself. I want to thank you Claire, we will always remember you finally and see you somewhere over the rainbow. Today I'm really excited to be speaking with Anna Rubenstein, who has kindly given up his time via zoom. Whilst he's looking after his dad, who's 90 years old in Melbourne during stage four restrictions. Anna is well known well recognized internationally for Childhood Development and rites of passage. He has had programs that have been attended by over 200,000 people in more than 20 countries. Anna is also a qualified doctor, a medical doctor, and he's also the author of the making of men and won multiple awards for his work, including being nominated in 2008 first train of the year. Army is also the proud father of two wonderful young men and the mentor to many, many others. I love his passion. And I hope you'll see that or hear that passion in his voice when I speak to him. So I welcome Ana Rubenstein to beaming green. Well, Anna, thanks very much for joining us on beaming green today. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and all your journey?

Arne Rubinstein: 4:58

Oh well. Good big question to start with Jeremy, I, you know, like I'm 56 years old now. So the journeys got a few different steps and bits to it. You know, I grew up in in Melbourne in Australia. And I've got two sons Jarrod and Jaden, who are now 28 and 30. I started my career as a doctor. I worked a couple of years in general practice and then 15 years in emergency medicine. And during that time, I became interested in what was happening to teenagers and adolescent development, a lot of the problems that I was seeing, and I started looking at something called rites of passage. And they basically took over my life. And I, in 2000, left my career as a doctor, and started working full time creating rites of passage for children and families, and initially in northern New South Wales, where I was living near Byron Bay. And then it's just one of those things. It's just taken over. And we've now set up programs around Australia and in about 50 schools and over 20 countries, globally and had more than 250,000 people we estimate participate in programs we've helped to create. So I'm now the CEO of the rites of passage Institute. Yep. And my latest thing is we've developed something called transformational parenting. Okay? helping families create strong, healthy, supportive environments, and they're just coming back to some level of sanity around how we're parenting our children, and how we can get them through their teenage years without having a major mental health issue, if possible, and, you know, stuff like that. Hmm.

Jeremy Melder: 6:52

So the rites of passage is a is a teenage years that your target pretty much Well,

Arne Rubinstein: 7:00

this is an interesting thing it used to be. And the idea of a rite of passage is something that helps you move from one stage in life to the next. And I now look at it, that we're all on a staircase of life. And we get born into it, we're on the bottom step. And then we progressively move up as we become teenagers and young adults. And some of our staircases may include becoming a parent and grandparent or even a great grandparent, and we get different jobs. And they all represent a stair we move to different places, we become elders. So we've all got this staircase. And the whole thing is, we're all supposed to keep periodically moving up the staircase. Yeah. And a rite of passage is an event that is designed to support you to move from one step to the next. Yep. Oh, absolutely. to children becoming young adults. That's a big step. But the thing is that all of us are somewhere on the staircase, which means that all of us need to at some stage, consider what's our next step? And what's going to change in our lives when we go to that step. And what do we need to let go off? Yeah, so I now I'm interested in creating rites of passage for people of all ages.

Jeremy Melder: 8:23

Well, that's fantastic. Now, I was reading on your website that you looking at this rite of passage as a, if you look at the indigenous traditions, and you know, for thousands of years that they've been, you know, introducing initiation at different stages of life now, is that the sort of format that you're getting your inspiration from is the indigenous?

Arne Rubinstein: 8:50

Yeah, absolutely. So the indigenous the traditional communities, they all recognize this, like, they wouldn't have caught it a staircase that they all but they will recognize that you move through stages of life and each assembly for them, the older you got, the more respect that you got.

Unknown: 9:06

And

Arne Rubinstein: 9:08

they created rites of passage and all these different stages. And when I looked at rites of passage all over the world, and in fact, I wasn't the first person to do that, that's for sure. There was a man called Arnold van glenapp, who in the 1800s, traveled around the world observing different rites of passage in different communities. And he recognized that all the rites of passages had the same three stages. Whoever was going through their rite of passage would be separated in some way from their normal life and their community. Yep. They would go through a transformation and change and then they would integrate and come back into the community, but at a different level on another step.

Unknown: 9:50

So

Arne Rubinstein: 9:52

we can still do that we can still work with him and get all right. It's your time to move from being toddler young adult or to get mad or whatever it is, we're going to create a rite of passage, we'll, you know, separate you from day to day life and put you through this process and then bring you back into life. Yep. My work has been around identifying what were the elements in the transformational stage that actually caused the person to change.

Jeremy Melder: 10:21

Yeah. And what have you identified,

Arne Rubinstein: 10:23

identified that there are four key elements that were always involved. The first was the sharing of stories. So stories have been used for thousands of years as a way of passing on wisdom and knowledge. Yeah. And also as a way of building community. So. So that was the first thing. And the second is that there's always a challenge. So there's some sort of difficult aspect of the rite of passage. The third is creating a vision for the future. Yeah. And the fourth is the idea of honoring or recognizing the gifts and the genius and the spirit of the individual who's going through the rite of passage. So if we put those four if we create the right environment, separate people, create the right environment, share stories, to appropriate challenges, help them make a vision for the future, and recognize what are their gifts? What what's their genius that they can bring to the world and really acknowledge that named people will go through a transformational process.

Jeremy Melder: 11:35

So can you can you tell me a little bit about some of those transformational changes that you may have noticed through some of your work?

Arne Rubinstein: 11:47

Sure, yeah. Well, the the change that we're looking for people to go through is actually in their mind in their sight. So the the changes from one set of values and one belief system to a new one that's more suitable for the next step that you're on. Yeah. So for example, the values the belief system of a child is that they're the center of the universe. Yes. very highly ego centric. It's all about me. Yeah, me, me, me. And everything is here for me. My mother's here for me. The world is here for me. And, yeah, that's fine. In a six year old and an eight year old, we don't really expect anything much different. Yeah. But when you get a 16 year old, who still thinks they're the center of the universe, it's all about me. And everyone's you know, their mother's supposed to be their servant. Yes, yeah, that starts to get a little bit awkward. Yeah. When you get a 45 year old man, who still thinks he's the center of the universe, yeah. It's all about me. And my mother, women are here to serve me. That's actually a big problem. That's actually man who is still functioning as boys. Yeah, just as an aside, I have to say, I have a major concern that we live in a world that is run by boys. And I agree with you. Yeah. And so the whole thing is to create this shift in the belief system of a person as they move from one stage to the next. So, you know, it could easily be, you know, a child moving to become a young adult, but even someone who's stepping up at work, you know, at one level, I have a boss, and you know, if I have hard decisions, and I don't know what to do I have someone to ask, yeah, there's another level where you actually, you don't have anyone, you got to actually make those decisions yourself. So there's a change in belief systems around, you know, at the first level, I believe I'm, you know, I'm part of a team and there's someone there that I can speak to, at the next level. It's like, I'm leading a team and I need to make decisions on behalf of my team. Yeah. You know, I've just gone through a rite of passage, Jeremy with the passing of my mother. Yeah. Yeah. You know, when I, when my mother was alive, I would go home. Even at my age, she cooked me dinner. be so happy to see me shower me with love. My father would sort of give me a lecture on what I should be doing with my life. And nothing had changed since I was 14 years old. Yep, yep. Now my mother is no longer there. And I go home and my father is needing help. Yeah. Yeah. And that is a so I no longer have anywhere I can be a child. No other things. So that creates a fundamental belief in changing my sort of belief system from there's someone sort of older than me or looking after me or ahead of me or something. I even if I can't describe it, I can absolutely tell you, there's a fundamental shift in your psyche when your parents pass away.

Jeremy Melder: 15:06

Yeah, I've got to say I've, I think I mentioned this to you, when we had a conversation that I've not experienced that. And that's not something that I'm looking forward to are observed, you know, the challenge that you've gone through, and in a way you've done in a wonderful way as well. And you've been very open about, you know, what you've been going through, in terms of, you know, this transition, do you think that you were saying that, you know, you felt like you were still, you know, that child that could go home and, you know, get their dinner served by their mothers? Do you think that there should be some sort of an elder elder system, you know, so, you know, even though, like, you and I are in our 50s, you know, we still could have the wise elder, couldn't we?

Arne Rubinstein: 15:53

I look, I'm so happy you brought that up. Yeah, it's so true. And just, you know, in terms of going home, and being a child, I need to say, that's been one of the was one of the joys of the last 1020 years of my life, and gave my mother joy to treat me that way. You know, when I left home, I became very dependent, independent and looked after myself. And, you know, I didn't my mother, sort of, you know, there was a different relationship, but as she moved into an elderly lady, and it actually became a very special thing to go home and, and have her look after me, and we both just love that. I, you know, it actually felt like a really grown up thing to do, to go home, and be her son and have her look after me. Yeah. Yeah. And then in terms of the elderhood. Yeah. And I, so I wrote a model about the difference between a boy and a man and the characteristics of a boy son, which I described, which is basically egocentric, and a man who is more about their role in the community what they're doing. And that's been very important in my work. And I've since extended that role. That model sorry, of it's not only Boyd, a man's child, to adult child to add out to elder, and we're one of the big things I think we're missing at the moment in our community, which is a major issue is elders. Yes. And whereas children are egocentric, and grown up, so to speak, more community centric, yes, and have a role. And it's about looking after those elders. It's another level again, where it's not, it's no longer about achievement, and empire building and being the boss and being the strong one and all of that, it becomes more about mentoring and supporting and advising. Yep. And actually a couple other things. There's a huge role for elders to look to connect with the young with the children. And traditionally, it was actually the role of the elders to be very much involved in the rites of passage. But a typical example of a really healthy elder child relationship is grandparents and grandchildren. Yes. And they say the grandparents and grandchildren have a special bond, because they have a common enemy. But anyway, aside from that, you know, if I look at my father, when he gets with the grandchildren, yes. They'll come over and he'll have microscopes and all sorts of different things and books and and he'll teach them things. And now they'll listen and they're interested. And you know, they gain wisdom and knowledge from being with my father. Yes. And that's something that they need. Absolutely. And my father gets energy, he's rolling around brand, and that's something that he needs.

Jeremy Melder: 18:59

Absolutely. I have no doubt that. The

Arne Rubinstein: 19:02

other things are that happens in that interaction. Yep. Is that my father sees the grandchildren, he sees how beautiful and wonderful I are and how clever they are. And he tells them, so they get seen, yes. Something once again, that they need. And my father, it gives him a role and a purpose. Yeah. It's also something that he needs. Yes. And on top of that, it gives space to the ones in the middle of parents to go off and, you know, do their Hero's Journey out in the world. So it's a really significantly important relationship if it can be managed. Well, yeah. And unfortunately, in the main, we don't have the elders and the role of the grandparents yeah off, which means the children are on their own. And they now spend so much more time on the computers. Yep, the parents are trying to juggle a million things and don't have time and there's a lot of stress The elders don't have a role and they're either on holidays or on the golf course or, you know people's homes, you know, without a purpose.

Unknown: 20:09

We'll be back in a moment.

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Jeremy Melder: 20:54

Welcome back. I agree. Look, I observed that lack of purpose in my own my own father, feeling like there's a sense of hope. And I think you shared the same thing with your dad. Do you see a solution or or some sort of way of getting more involvement from people that want to be elders in communities? is a Are you looking at some sort of a courser that that can bring people to meet, you know, younger people or people in their 40s to have an elder that sort of guides and through the next phases of their life?

Unknown: 21:32

Well,

Arne Rubinstein: 21:34

I am as it happens, and I you know, I think the first step in all of these things is education, even knowing that it's something that we could be doing. Yeah. Because there's also another really interesting role of the elders. They not only mentor the if it's done well, they can mentor the grown ups are one in the middle. Yeah. But they also keep them in check. Yeah. So what I mean by that is they, you know, they advise them and things getting out of control. They'll tell them Yeah, when you remove the elders, the danger is that the the, the adults are grownups, when they get some power become megalomaniacs. It's true. I did want more and more. Yeah. Whereas if the elders are there, you know, they they will call that out. Yeah. So, you know, I know, I've had very good elders in my life and men who've been very important to me. Yeah. And I, I think, you know, we could absolutely pretend potentially be bringing that back. Yes. And, and I see, in fact, my work is moving in that direction. You know, I'm 56. Now, I feel like I'm just on the edge, starting to look into elderhood Yep. Not the I'm not an outsider, but I, you know, it's going to happen. And I'd like to do that. Well, in fact, you know, maybe egoic Lee, but my hope is that I can do elderhood turn to the best of the stages of my life that I've lived sort of, you know, because I am hopefully coming into it with some level of awareness. And I'm very interested in exploring more and more what it means and how to do it. Well, and all of that.

Jeremy Melder: 23:21

Yeah, I think if you I think we've talked about this, but like in the mankind project, they talk about the Sovereign, the elders coming from the sovereign, is dear to me, because I think that's not coming from egoic state, but it's just coming from the center of the arts right for that person and coming from their wisdom or drawing on their wisdom to share that

Arne Rubinstein: 23:44

the role of the elder is to help bring out the best in those who are younger. Yeah. Yeah. Which is a very, it's absolutely a non egoic place. And, you know, that part in order hood and and, you know, part of elder hood is actually even being able to sit with death. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it is the precursor to death.

Jeremy Melder: 24:06

Yeah. And we don't do that well, either doing that scenario, but that's another conversation. Now, I remember once honor that there was when I was, you know, late 30s. A wise man said to me, you know, Jeremy, you need to build a foundation before you can have the house, I was really naive I and now I reflect on that. That was really good advice, you know, about, you know, build that foundation for yourself so that you're rock solid, so you can help others, rather than going in helping people without any foundation. I look at it now, when I'm in my 50s. And God, that's what they meant. And I didn't really connect the dots.

Arne Rubinstein: 24:47

Yeah, no, I think we would have a very, very different world. If we had active elders, and if we respected elders. Yeah. And you know, we there was, there's a lot of challenges. against the elder hood, because, unfortunately, there's shame associated with becoming older. Yes. And so people try and deny and try and pretend they're young. Like who wants to be an elder? And um, you don't you just said, but yeah,

Unknown: 25:15

not yet anyway.

Jeremy Melder: 25:19

So one of the things I want to talk about is, you know, parenting children in adolescence. And that can be like a challenging thing, particularly now with COVID. Do you have any advice for parents that are experiencing difficulties in the current COVID climate? or just in general? It will look, it's a huge topic. I mean, parenting is just typical, and, well, difficult. It's a journey. Yeah. And none of us very much, including me, a perfect parents, that learns about growing. And I do try and bring it down to basics. And for me, parenting teenagers, well, hopefully starts when they're young, it's very hard to start parenting a teenager once they become a teenager. Yep. lost that connection. And unfortunately, I see that there's not a lot of common sense parenting goes on already in the younger years. So as a name that Yeah. And I talked about some, you know, some basic principles, I'll mention a few of them. And this is why we've actually created our transformational parenting course. And we'll put a link in your podcasts or paper can find out about that. Absolutely. We talked about things like finding an activity that you can do together, one on one that you both enjoy. Yeah. So Jeremy, was anything you enjoyed doing with your father, when you're, again, my, my memory was that we actually walked on the beach together. When I was growing up in Sri Lanka, there was a favorite time I remember.

Arne Rubinstein: 26:58

Brilliant. So I would recommend you know, every, you know, find it, find it, it might be walking on the beach, it might be kicking a ball might be playing music, it might be, you know, having coffee before you go to school in the morning, you know, whatever it is, but I say to all parents, find some and start this as you with them as young as possible. Yeah. Find saying enjoy doing together and just do it. You cannot do mobile phones, just do it. Don't ask them a million questions. Don't tell them what to do with their lives. Just be with them. Yep. And give them the opportunity to ask questions or hear your stories and things like that. That's the first thing I recommend. The second is, I recommend share stories with them about when you were their age, including what went well, and including what you struggled with, so that they actually get to know you and they get to know you at their age, not just as an older person who, you know, appears to have it all sorted out. Yeah. And within that, when you're sharing the story, be open to answering their questions. Yeah, about anything. Yep. The third thing I recommend is that when things don't work out, and discipline is required, that it's really, really important to separate the person from the behavior. So you don't shame them.

Jeremy Melder: 28:19

So important. I agree with that,

Arne Rubinstein: 28:20

though. Important. Tommy's gone wrong. You don't tell them they're bloody hopeless, don't ever amount to anything. They're useless. You know, it's got to be okay. He was not okay. And what happens not? Okay. So, I love you. So what else is going on? Or let's talk about it. Let's work out what we need to do. Blah, blah, yeah, we can actually be a really healing and transformational process. Yeah. And then the last one I'm going to recommend today is that we practice recognizing, acknowledging their gifts and what they do well. So if they do something well, and you know, and it's a bit subtle or not obviously gonna, hey, I saw that, you know, pick that piece of paper up in the street and throw it in the bin where you didn't have to. Yeah. Yeah, just that positive reinforcement, as opposed to criticism, yeah, is massively important. So if we can do those four things as a starting place, spending one on one time sharing our stories, separating the person from the behavior and not shaming them in discipline is required. And practicing acknowledging their gifts and their, their genius. Yeah, that and we can do all those things starting when they're two years old, by the way, yeah. They are really, really good techniques today. And and I guess the other thing I always recommend is that when they reach puberty when they're changing, get involved in a rite of passage with them. Yeah, Lisa, celebrate and acknowledge the fact that they are becoming a young adult, and you as a parent are moving to the next stage as well in your journey.

Jeremy Melder: 30:00

Yeah, absolutely. Hey on one on just you just led me to that. So the run rites of passage camps is that right now you do that for for for males and females.

Arne Rubinstein: 30:11

Yes, yeah. Yeah, we've been running rods pester camps now for nearly 25 years. And the informations on our website, the rites of passage. institute.org. Right spell, are it? Yes, yeah. So we do making a man camps, which are for 14 to 17 year old boys and their fathers. Yeah, I wouldn't know mother daughter camps that we have set up and support. We, we have Junior camps mother son camp for eight to 12 year old boys, we have father daughter weekends, for seven to 11 year old girls and their dads have a holiday. And we train a lot of people, we do a lot of leadership training. So we train people to be facilitators. So they can go and set up their own programs in their own way in their own communities. So we can help people access programs all over Australia, and, indeed, in many places around the world. Because we don't, our aim is for rites of passage to come back into the mainstream, and not for everyone to be doing our program. But to use the elements are a rite of passage, and then create the appropriate program for their community.

Jeremy Melder: 31:19

Absolutely. I think, you know, I've I've seen evidence of your work with some of my friends and their kids that have been with their parents. And though they've all talked very highly of the programs, and they've got a lot out of it. And it's actually enhanced their relationship with their, with their kids. And both ways, you know, and with their parents. And, you know, I seen evidence of that, and it's wonderful work that you are doing on I really think it's really worth acknowledging your efforts. The other thing I wanted to chat with you about is house things going with running programs currently, I mean, are you able to do anything? Via

Arne Rubinstein: 32:04

COVID? Yes, or no, we've actually cancelled all of our programs, right? for the year. Yep. The pause, I, I just don't think we can responsibly bring people together from initially around the country, but even around the state, and have them, you know, even trying to do social distancing and everything. Yeah, bringing a whole bunch of people together from around the state for five days, and then sending them back around the state. Difficult I it's just not difficult. And I just, unfortunately, don't use responsible. So we've now moved our programs online, right? Yep. And we have our transformational parenting courses. And we have our introduction to the rite of passage framework training program. And we're putting more and more programs have just written one about how to make a birthday a rite of passage, how to how to run a graduation as a rite of passage, target a whole bunch of stuff online now that people can get, and then I do a video and give them a worksheet, which gives good clear instructions about how they can turn a significant event into a rite of passage at home with their family and or, you know, groups of other families who are at the same stage.

Jeremy Melder: 33:16

That sounds great. So how you say, basically, people go to your rites of passage website, and they can find those courses. Yeah. Correct. If they go there and sort of search around a little bit. Yep. I find it and they can also contact us. Yeah, absolutely. I'll put I'll put links to all of this anyway, on our on our program. And the other thing I want to find out, it's it's not just you know, that the young and, you know, adults, but you're also working with community organizations, and and also professional organizations that writing 10s of team building and so on. Yeah, yeah. How's that going? Or has that been? How has it been going pre COVID? Should I say?

Arne Rubinstein: 33:56

Well, it's actually very good and very interesting part of our work. Because rites of passage not only haven't for individuals, to happen for families, they happen for communities. They happen for countries. Yeah, you know, the whole discussion about that. We're actually in a global rite of passage at the moment. We're in a transformational phase for the world. Yeah. And those rites of passage can happen well, or they can happen badly. Yeah, it's happened. Well, we grow we go to the next level, we evolve. If they haven't badly, it's a traumatic wounding experience that we may or may not ever even get over. Yeah. So my whole interest is in about being able to make these happen well, and I've been doing some work with some indigenous groups, specifically The Batchelor mob in southeast Queensland who actually approached me and said, You know, we're worried about our boys, and we want to create a rite of passage, but we don't actually know how to do it anymore because there haven't been any here for 200 years. It's, you know, occupation. Yeah. So We talked and we said, Look, We'll train you in the framework. And then you bring as much culture as you can. And together, we'll do something. Hmm. Sounds usually successful program. Yeah. And I could actually send you a little five minute YouTube linked about that program. That sounds great. I'd love to share that with you that Yep. And their women approached us in at the end of last year and said, We want to do something for our girls as well. So we've done a big leadership training in the area for local community members. And in the next 12 months, we'll be setting up programs for girls as well. Yeah. And we're working with a number of schools, who are looking at putting rites of passage programs, through the school and building family and community events, over the period of the student journey at the school, and, and also worked with some pretty big companies around supporting them to take their teams to the next stage. So, you know, all of these things are great projects, and I love doing them. And I know they're of enormous benefit to the groups that we work with.

Jeremy Melder: 36:07

Yeah. Yeah,

Arne Rubinstein: 36:08

its all of that using the rite of passa e framework. Yep. And modifying it accordingly and appropriately to the environment that we're in

Jeremy Melder: 36:18

Absolutely. And I know you're a tight schedule, I want to thank you very much for your time today on beaming green, I will share that information and put these podcasts up for people to listen to, I'm sure they'll enjoy it and get a lot out of it. So thank you.

Arne Rubinstein: 36:38

My pleasure, Jeremy, thanks for doing what you're doing. Thanks for creating this. Thanks for having me on. And you know, it's a great conversation. It's a you know, I get to speak for half an hour, 40 minutes about what I love doing and and, you know, believing, right, I learned also and gives me a chance to really explore the concepts that we're doing, and it's great. So thank you very much. Thank you.

Jeremy Melder: 36:59

Thanks. Once again, cheers. Thank you for being part of the beaming green podcast. The music for this podcast is produced by Dave Weir now we need more p ople to get on board and raise a areness about sustainability a d climate change. The more of u that are shining the light on t ese issues, the more g vernment, business leaders w ll listen, we would love you t subscribe to our podcast and s are and engage in social media s that we can get some t action. Let's support one a other and envision a brighter f ture. Thanks for listening and s e you next week.