What shared purpose can make possible
It would have been easy to dismiss it as just another community fundraiser. A few pickleball courts alive with players. Some friendly competition. Sausages on a barbecue. A raffle. A chance to spend the Monday of a long weekend doing something enjoyable while raising money for a good cause. Instead, it became a reminder that ideas are built and led in much the same way they always have been: one conversation, one invitation and one shared purpose at a time.
Pickleball is one of Australia’s fastest-growing sports. Its popularity isn’t difficult to understand. You don’t need years of experience or elite fitness to play. Beginners and seasoned competitors can find themselves on the same court within minutes, laughing as much as they are keeping score. It is accessible, welcoming and unassumingly democratic. Perhaps that is why it became the perfect vehicle for something much bigger.
When a team from the 2025 Tasmanian Leaders Program began exploring ideas for their Community Action Project, they weren’t simply looking for a fundraising event. They were looking for something that could genuinely bring people together. They wanted an idea that would invite participation rather than spectatorship, where connection became part of the outcome rather than simply a means to achieve it.
The cause they chose was Clown Doctors Australia, whose work brings lightness, laughter and human connection to children in hospital and older Australians in residential care. It is difficult to quantify the value of a smile in those settings, but anyone who has witnessed it knows it matters.
The team set themselves a fundraising goal of $15,000. Together with volunteers, sponsors, local businesses, the growing pickleball community and hundreds of donations, they raised more than $27,000. It would be tempting to measure the success of the project by that figure alone. The more interesting story lies elsewhere.
Every Community Action Project asks participants to leave behind the comfort of their own professional worlds and work alongside people with different experiences, networks and perspectives. Ideas are tested, challenged and reshaped adaptively. Leadership moves between people depending on what the moment requires. Progress depends less on having the best idea, more on building enough trust for everyone to contribute and let outcomes emerge.
The event was built by many hands. Experienced players introduced newcomers to the game. Local organisations opened doors. Businesses contributed resources. Volunteers gave their time. Countless small acts of generosity accumulated into something none of the individuals could have achieved alone.
For team participant Anne Rathjen TLP19, the project represented another step in a journey that began through scholarships generously provided to Tasmanian Leaders by the Select Foundation. Those scholarships opened access to both the I-LEAD Young Professionals program and in 2025, the Tasmanian Leaders Program, creating opportunities to grow alongside people from every corner of the state. Like many alumni, Anne discovered that leadership was less about finding answers than learning how to ask better questions, build stronger relationships and create the conditions for self and others to succeed.
Pickle for a Giggle in its overwhelming success, both from a fundraising and a project leading lens, surfaces a Tasmanian thread. Leadership rarely arrives with fanfare. More often it looks like noticing what matters, inviting others to care and trusting that something worthwhile can emerge when people come together around a shared purpose.
On an island, communities overlap. Sectors intersect. The person standing beside you today may become your collaborator, soccer team volunteer, staff member or Premier tomorrow. Leadership here has always depended less on individual ambition and more on the willingness to contribute to something larger than yourself.
Pickle for a Giggle wasn’t about pickleball. It was about what became possible because people chose to show up for one another. The money raised will continue bringing moments of joy into hospitals and aged care homes across Tasmania. The pilot partnership of pickleball and Clown Doctors Australia is going national to be deployed by communities across Australia.
The best leadership stories rarely finish when the game ends. They continue in the possibilities that follow.
