It was Sean and Verney. Would I sign the letter they had prepared to help them raise money to get to Chicago. "But", I almost protested, "we leave in two days time." " It is too late now to start raising money. Apart from that I am too busy trying to sort out everything for all the other students who are going." However I bit my tongue and the words never came out. You need to have faith in people, and you need to always help them, no matter how crazy their proposals may seem.

I signed the letter and sent them off with an encouraging word, confident that I would not see them again before we were all on the plane and on our way. We would tell them all about it all when we got back.

They were back within a day with news that they had raised the money. They had been to every architect's office and every planning office in town and offered on their return to give an hour long lunch time report to all the staff in the office on what had gone on at the UIA/AIA Congress in Chicago. At a fee of only $100 for each presentation it was a bargain which none of the offices could refuse.

There was already excitement around the town. At the "Earth Summit" in Rio New Zealander Graeme Robertson had spent a great deal of time lobbying Susan Maxman, the President-Elect of the AIA. In the American system Susan was able to choose the topic for the next Congress, and Graeme convinced her that it ought to be "sustainability". At that time no one in the USA had heard of the word so the stakes were high. Our aim was nothing less than convincing the USA to go green.

There were more students from Aotearoa in Chicago than from any other nation except the host, but our numbers were tiny in the context of a UIA/AIA Congress. We all had black T-shirts and black caps emblazoned with "Papatuanuku", and our bags were full of banners and written material to spread around. "Papatuanuku" was the name I had given, after much consultation with kaumatua, to the NZIA Congress which we were having in Aotearoa later in the year. Papatunuku means "mother earth". It embodies all the idealism of sustainability. Mother earth sustains us and gives us life. Papatuanuku embodies the concept that architecture should spring from place, landscape and community in a seamless relationship to the universe. We took with us the power of a word.

With a budget worked out in some haste Sean and Verney had forgotten to include anything for accommodation, so they headed off to a Chicago park for the night while we moved into the bargain-basement Wacker Hotel. Some of the students found the gunshot holes in the Wacker doors a little un-nerving but everything in Chicago was a steep learning curve. There were fortunately only a couple of murders in nearby streets while we were there. Just getting through the day was drama enough. The students accepted that if they wanted a safe, secure life they had signed up for the wrong course. The advantage of the Wacker was that it is located almost on the site of the fort which was the first building at the very beginning of Chicago, just where the river enters the lake. You learn about urban design by living out the history of a town.

The Congress got under way with all the usual tedious speeches from very important people. Then it was the turn of very important architects. There was a panel of the truly great names. Each had ten minutes to explain their take on the theme and then there was an opportunity for questions from the floor. There were more than 3000 architects in the auditorium, but none had the nerve to challenge the pearls of conventional wisdom. Sean and Verney however took the microphone. They were not awestruck because none of the great names meant anything to them.

Sean and Verney began by pointing out the obvious. We were in a totally enclosed concrete air-conditioned box while outside the sun was shining. They had just had a cup of instant coffee out of a plastic mug which was then trashed. They could speak for the poor of Chicago because they had met some 3000 of them sleeping in the park last night. By the time they got to the rubbish bins everything had been taken. It was a world which no one in the hall knew anything about. Their question was very simple. "What was each member of the panel going to do in their own lives in the next month to help sustain the life of the planet?" There was an awestruck and awkward silence. 3000 architects took a deep breath.

Richard Rodgers saved the day. He began answering the question by talking about his local PTA and the changes they were hoping to make in their local school. The entire UIA/AIA Congress headed off in a different direction. The mood moved from talking to doing. What architects could begin doing tomorrow. Local action to bring global results. What Jaime Lerner would much later describe as "globalising the local".

Sean and Verney were swept away by the "New York Times" and the "New York Herald Tribune". They became the darlings of the media. A boring Congress suddenly became newsworthy. I only had time to advise them to make all their media interviews in a restaurant so that they got a free feed. We were on our way. Before the end of the Congress almost every country in the world had signed up to our "Declaration of Interdependence". The path would be long but the journey had got off to a great start.

In all this I never told Sean or Verney what they ought to do. I did not want them to meet my expectations, I wanted them to exceed my expectations. They did.

When you tell people what to do that is all they do. Students graduate as clones of their lecturers, and the world grinds on with power structures unchallenged. Power is the root cause of war, and also the root cause of poverty.

If we are going to end war and poverty we need to set people free. We need to empower them so that they can do what we could never have done.