The 3 Pillars of the NED Foundation

Who we are

The NED Foundation is a non-profit organisation.   Our mission is to support social and community activists.

  • The NED Foundation is a non-profit organisation fostering social and personal evolutionary processes within Australia and the world.
  • NED is an acronym of 'Nurturing Evolutionary Development'
  • NED arose from the realisation that a pro-active approach was needed, beyond the purpose of the SDN.

What we do

NED is established for the purposes of fostering social and personal evolutionary processes within Australia and the world.

We seek the emergence of an invigorated, unifying Australian ethos, and then beyond this we advocate an Australian role in helping humanity steer itself to secure a future on the Earth.

The Foundation's main action strategy is to use NED volunteers to assist and encourage individuals and groups to adopt the principles of 'involvement', and in each person's case to do this through a broad, species-nurturing, interpersonally developmental approach to how they tackle their particular specialised work role or field of interest.


Our story

NED arose out of the vision of Ned Iceton (1930 - 2015).

Ned saw himself as a ‘cultural therapist’

He was inspired by his mother’s efforts as a community developer during the Great Depression when she galvanised the town of Gunnedah NSW to cope. His early experiences as a doctor working in the Northern Territory, the UK and the Sub-Continent gave him confidence to engage with many different people and situations.

When he returned to Armidale he made contact with Aboriginal people and farmers and developed workshops of mutual support and action. He shared his learning journey with his wife Joan until she died, and then continued to practice meditation as part of managing himself and recognising the unconscious elements in life.

“My object has always been to plug every new understanding into every pre-existing one”.

In later years the restorative justice/practice approach became for him an example of achieving emotional learning by being cognitively explicit and turning society away from negativism.

Ned Iceton died on 30 June 2015 and was farewelled at a large funeral gathering in Armidale on 7 July. A later memorial meeting was held in Canberra on 24 October. On both occasions strong tributes were given to the significant impact of Ned’s life on many people around Australia.

"Much loved and respected friend, supporter and mentor to many people and causes."

Continuing the work of Ned Iceton

Ned Iceton left a foundation to continue promoting creative social development. This website is the online face of that foundation. The foundation's mission is to support social and community activists.


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