STORIES OF CHANGE
Acting for change
W I N T E R 2 01 8 | £ 2 . 0 0
Pillow power
Woman of honour
Contents
Pillow power: page 4
I can’t give up: page 10
Running with the bishop: page 18
04
Pillow power
14
Living peace in Syria
06
Woman of honour
16
Family affair
08
Acting for change
18
Running with the bishop
10
I can’t give up
20
Stand your ground
12
Unlocking the pearl inside
22
My own best friend
Initiatives of Change United Kingdom
Initiatives of Change is a worldwide movement of people of diverse cultures and backgrounds who are committed to the transformation of society through changes in human motives and behaviour, starting in their own lives. We work to inspire, equip and connect people to address world needs in the areas of trust building, ethical leadership and sustainable living. In the UK, Initiatives of Change is a registered charity No. 226334 (England and Wales).
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Changemakers Magazine 24 Greencoat Place, London SW1P 1RD Tel: 020 7798 6000 Editor: Yee-Liu Williams | Sub-editor: Mary Lean Designer: Laura Noble Cover photo: Julia Neal Photographers: Steve Brock, Laura Noble, Siegrid von Arnim Salazar, Roger Way, Yee-Liu Williams All rights reserved. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the publishers. ISSN: 2059-5719
Please contact us with your views: Initiatives of Change UK @iofc_uk Initiatives of Change UK @iofc_uk initiativesofchangeuk comms.uk@iofc.org
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STORIES OF CHANGE
From the Editor As the centenary of women’s suffrage in the UK draws to a close, headlines continue to expose the gender pay gap. Sex discrimination and #metoo stories go viral. While the media rightly draws attention to the slow progress of change, a quiet steadfast army of women changemakers goes unacknowledged. This issue shares some of their stories. Among them, Fritha Vincent (p4) and Tsegga Medhin Seyoum (p12) demonstrate how education can empower women and girls; women investing in women to achieve sustainable economic growth and equal opportunities. We look at the ongoing struggle for justice in the aftermath of war in Uganda (p10) and one woman’s work to build peace in Syria (p14). Two Muslim women, Jamila Sajid (p6) and Samiya Lerew (p16), challenge stereotypical views of how to be a Muslim woman in today’s Britain. I am honoured to have been the editor of this issue, and to share with you my appreciation of the resilience, determination and indomitable spirit of these women leaders of our time. For more stories of change, and to subscribe to receive updates, visit our website: www.changemakersmagazine.org
Yee-Liu Williams, Editor comms.uk@iofc.org
Our writers
Mar y Lean
SUB-EDITOR
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Amanda Clements Federica Dadone Jacqui Daukes Kate Monkhouse Jonathan Ranger Helena Salazar de von Arnim Aleksandra Shymina Yee-Liu Williams
Laura Noble DESIGNER
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Secret Pillows empowers women in rural India
Pillow power What can a pillow do for women in rural India? Fritha Vincent enlightens Federica Dadone. The roar of the sewing machine has been the soundtrack of Fritha Vincent’s life. As a child, growing up in Britain with deafness and dyslexia, she would snuggle underneath pillows for safety and security. Her best friend’s mother used to make ‘quillows’, pillows that opened out into quilts.
‘Prevention through production’ Years later, while working for Save the Children as a fundraiser, she stumbled on a women’s group in a remote village in Kerala, who were herding goats and making flower wreaths. As she chatted and made knotted rosebuds with the women she spied a treadle sewing machine in a corner covered in dust. The women told her they had had stitching training through a microfinance loan and actually wanted to sew and sell cotton products, but there was no market. That day Fritha decided that she would take the 4 | Changemakers
quillows of her childhood (renamed Secret Pillows) to India, and within six months she had trained some Indian women to make them. She found a buyer for each of those first 50 pillows through a Facebook campaign. ‘I’m really sad I didn’t keep one!’ she says. She raised tens of thousands of pounds through two crowdfunding campaigns to keep production going, and from that point, in 2014, there was no turning back. To her great sadness, she lost contact with the village women who gave her the idea of the Secret Pillow project. But thanks to them, women in other remote communities are becoming financially independent and gaining the confidence to ‘make the best choices for themselves and their children’. The project has helped them to achieve their vision of sending their children to school. Fritha has recently married and is also a foster parent. Maybe because of her hearing and dyslexia, maybe because of her free spirit, she struggled at high school, but flourished when she was moved to a more progressive, independent school. She says her deafness has strengthened her resilience – and also sparked her interest in India. As a child, she went to the ear www.changemakersmagazine.org
doctor every month and the only things she read in his waiting room were leaflets with pictures of kids from the mountains in India, where he went every year to do pro bono surgeries. She decided to have a cake sale and give all the money to him for these children: ‘my first event as a fundraiser!’
‘We believe in ourselves.’
Photos: Courtesy of Secret Projects
Because of her deafness, not understanding the language in India doesn’t bother her. ‘I’m used to not having a clue of what’s going on around me,’ she says. ‘I found out I can communicate with these women using a language I can understand – sewing.’ A side project is the Secret Sari Dress, a beach wrap made of sari fabric that folds out of itself. Women rescued from brothels make the dress in their safe houses. The crowdfunding campaign which kickstarted the project went viral. It was designed as a ‘prevention through production programme’, through which the girls
can earn enough money not to go back to the sex trade. Survivors are now working with at-risk girls in their villages. Fritha believes that when women are in control of the household budget, they are empowered; when mothers have their own income children are healthier, happier, better educated, safer. She points out that 80 per cent of the children who live in institutions around the world are not there because they don’t have any parent. They are there because their parents cannot afford to feed, clothe and educate them. Her social enterprise business, Secret Projects, has trained 500 women. They are treated as entrepreneurs, not beneficiaries and each receives three to four orders a year. Fritha describes them as a ‘network of makers’. Their mantra is: ‘We believe in ourselves. We support one another. We persist. We trust our instinct. We take pride in everything we do. We work with joy.’ They receive at least twice the minimum wage for the products they make. She says it is wonderful to think that this product, rooted in a time in her childhood when she felt safe and secure, can help ‘unfold women’s power’ through a ‘sewing revolution’ that bridges divides across the world.
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Jamila Sajid
Woman of honour Jamila Sajid tells Jonathan Ranger that Muslim men have no right to dictate to women – and her husband, an Imam, agrees.
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At 16, Jamila married Abduljalil Sajid, a young academic and Imam. At first, he ‘wished’ her to cover her hair – she refused. ‘It would be dishonourable for me to force you,’ was his attitude. They are open-minded with their three daughters and two sons, supporting them as independent people expressing their own personalities. ‘I am lucky I married an Imam who is “moderate”,’ says Jamila. Sajid, who is acknowledged as an authority on Islam, comments, ‘As Imam and husband, I have no right to tell my wife what to wear or how to behave.’
‘Culture and religion get mixed up.’ Shortly after their marriage, Sajid travelled to Britain to start a PhD. Jamila joined him later, and they set up home in Brighton. Sajid established the first mosque in Brighton, and served as its Imam for 35 years. He helped to establish many other mosques across the UK, gaining the honoured title of Mufti. Jamila ran the Muslim Ladies Circle, with women referred through mosques and for www.changemakersmagazine.org
Photo: Yee-Liu Williams
When Jamila Sajid was eight, her headmaster told her to wear a hijab and burka. Her two sisters conformed, but she rebelled. That day she told her mother, ‘My school days are finished’. Over 50 years on, she continues to challenge stereotypes about how Muslim women and men should behave. Jamila was born poor in a remote village in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Her father was a Muslim firefighter who had lost one eye and only came home once a month with 69 rupees. Her mother was a traditional Indian Hindu-turned-Muslim who wore a burka all her life. ‘I listened to my mother sometimes,’ says Jamila, ‘but nobody can say anything to me.’ She became a tomboy, with her father’s loving, independent spirit. The family moved to Lahore, West Pakistan, when her oldest brother, now Professor Irshad Siddiqui, won a scholarship and married. He took on extra teaching to enable his sisters to continue their schooling. In Lahore Jamila found freedom of choice rather than traditional custom. ‘Education helps emancipation, dispels taboos and keeps Islam moderate – the under-educated become fundamentalists as they’re easily influenced,’ she reflects today.
uncle kidnapping, raping and cutting up his niece before putting her body in a deep freeze because ‘she brought dishonour upon the family’. Jamila comments, ‘Muslims can meet or marry whomever they love.’ One of her sons married a Jewish woman and the other a Christian. ‘All are children of God,’ she says. ‘Training should be given at high school, and to the judiciary, police and scholars, to completely eradicate honour killing and abuse of women,’ she insists. ‘Female genital mutilation, forced marriage and honour-based violence, child trafficking, rape and selling daughters are not Qur’anic.
‘There is no honour in honour killing.’ ‘I say to women: be strong. Don’t let your husband or any man force you to do what you needn’t do. You have rights to be happy, contented, protected and cared for. Or find someone else! ‘To men I say: respect, love and care for one another. No abuse – your wife is equal, not a servant. You are the main provider, and a working wife keeps her own earnings. ‘To children I say: be good people, value everything from your parents, who should love you unconditionally. ‘To all I say: be unselfish and forgiving; we all make mistakes. Bad deeds you can overcome by good deeds. Help each other understand truth and love. Read and learn what the Qur’an and Islam really teach.’
Photo: Courtesy of Abduljalil and Jamila Sajid
anyone of any faith. She worked, to gain economic independence, and as a community interpreter in Urdu, Bengali and Punjabi, liaising with police, hospitals, lawyers and immigration. Jamila points out that in Islam, as in Christianity, ‘culture and religion get horribly mixed up’. True Islam is surrender of self to God’s way of peace, respect, equality and mutual support. ‘We must stop men’s attitude to women, by education in schools and mosques.’ She regrets the influence of ‘ignorance and false teaching’, and how few people really want to change the status quo. ‘Religious leaders have power – but they abuse it, not wanting to give equality. How do we get through to them? If parents are not well educated, they can’t teach their children the truth. They think going to mosque will make children good Muslims, but young people are easy targets for brainwashing and radicalisation. ‘Segregation of women from men in the mosque is not Islamic or Qur’anic. We’re supposed to worship together equally – but men get distracted by women bending forward during prayers, so women are hidden away. That’s cultural, not what God wants. Our word kawami means men have a duty towards women, to care and provide, not dominate. It’s about honour.’ In September 2006, at the invitation of the British Council in Karachi, Jamila shared a platform with her husband on ‘There is no honour in honour killing’. ‘Honour killing is a pre-Islamic custom, based on ignorance and disregard of morals and laws. It’s against the teachings of Islam and Shariah law: all forms of life are sacred,’ she explains. Honour killings in the UK have risen 53 per cent since 2014. We discuss the recent case in Surrey of an
Imam Sajid addresses the ’There is no honour in honour killing’ conference at the British Council in Karachi in 2006.
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Chris Channer
Acting for change Chris Channer talks with Amanda Clements about a lifetime using theatre to make a difference.
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play, she found them ‘outgoing and straightforward’. ‘My life was in a mess and in need of a good clear out,’ she says. Professionally, she was going through a difficult time, with a challenging role. ‘For the first time ever I prayed about a part that I had to play.’
‘I knew I was at a crossroads.’ When she was invited to go to the MRA conference centre in Caux, Switzerland, she was flattered but unsure. ‘I wasn’t conference material and I only read the theatre critics, never the front pages of newspapers.’ But she had 12 free days between the end of her ballet engagement and the contract she had signed for the Edinburgh Festival; her parents paid for her to go, as she was ‘absolutely skint’. Once there, she only went to one meeting. At it she heard Irène Laure, a French socialist leader and a www.changemakersmagazine.org
Photo: Yee-Liu williams
Chris Channer is a sprightly, 94-year-old retired dancer and actor. Her South London home is full of stage memorabilia and family treasures. As a struggling actress just after World War II, she says she was rather ‘a wayward girl’. It was the prospect of free food that got her to the Westminster Theatre that evening in 1946, as ‘she was rather hungry’. It was that night that her life changed. The play Chris had gone to see – The Forgotten Factor – was the first play staged by Moral ReArmament (now Initiatives of Change) after it bought the Westminster Theatre in 1946. Chris’s parents were members of the group of businesspeople who raised the money to buy the theatre as a memorial to MRA servicemen who had died in the war. The money had arrived in 2,857 gifts, mostly small. The play looked at industrial relations through the story of two families on either side of an industrial dispute, and suggested that change in the world had to start in the individual. Chris was struck by the goodlooking American actors. When she met them after the
member of the Resistance in Marseilles during World War II, apologise to the Germans present for her hatred of them. ‘It was an electrifying experience,’ she remembers. ‘I was deeply impacted because it was not just words but real change.’ She spent most of the rest of her time in the Caux theatre, observing ‘how they used theatre to carry the message’.
‘ You’ll never know what you did for me.’
Photos: Yee-Liu williams & Roger Way
During this time, two older actresses asked her to help with an MRA production. She said she would after she had worked out her contract for the Edinburgh Festival. One of them said: ‘Don’t you think that’s rather a cheap way of looking at it – saying to God, “I’ll do your work, but in my time”?’ Chris knew in her heart she was at a crossroads. She went up the mountain for some peace ‘to listen to the voice within’. It was an epiphany. ‘It was a profound opportunity to make a change; a call to action.’ The ‘whole world’ was represented at Caux, and ‘there was so much healing needed’. She wrote pulling out of her contract, and received a letter back from the company director saying her action was crazy. But a week later he wrote again, ‘If you believe you are doing the right thing, I will find somebody to replace you.’
Chris went on to tour with MRA productions in many countries – she met her husband, Dick, playing siblings in one travelling show. ‘It was part of our life to reach out to people. Wherever you were you would be part of the community you found yourself in.’ Until it was sold in 1998, Chris both appeared in productions at the Westminster Theatre and helped to run it. It gained a reputation as a professional theatre which viewed contemporary issues ‘through the lens of faith and moral values’ and aimed to give audiences new will to address the problems in their lives and communities. Audiences used to come in coachloads from all over the country. Its schools programme, which ran from 1967 to 1990, brought in 300 children a day at its height. The audiences could stay after some performances to talk to the cast. This disrupted standard theatre conventions and was ‘groundbreaking’ for both audience and actors. Chris has maintained contact with many of the young actors who took part in productions at the theatre. She talks of one, now at the top of his profession and a pioneer of Black theatre, who wrote to her: ‘You’ll never know what you did for me.’ Looking back to her experience at Caux, all those years ago, Chris says that it challenged her to ‘clean up her own life and help give meaning to others: I wouldn’t have had anything to say to anybody if I had stayed as I was’. Her experience gave her courage to act on her beliefs. ‘I grasped the chance to play a part in changing the way things were in the world by the way I lived.’
Chris Channer outside the former Westminster Theatre
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Josephine Apira
I can’t give up Josephine Apira knows the pain of northern Uganda first hand. She talks to Amanda Clements and Yee-Liu Williams. Gulu, expecting to return in two days after things settled down. ‘The journey back to Gulu is still on, 33 years later,’ she says. ‘In the end I had to abandon thinking about home to find safety for myself.’
‘Violence has silenced people from speaking up.’ People fled in fear of their lives. ‘Hit squads’ attacked villages, shot people by the roadside or at gatherings and funerals, and even herded people into buildings and then killed them. Over two million people were displaced. ‘I lost many family members, neighbours, friends and colleagues in this operation,’ says Josephine. Her mother was one of 22 villagers killed when the army attacked her village; when the army looted the family home, her brother was arrested and tortured and died two years
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Photo: Yee-Liu Williams
Josephine Apira, an Acholi woman from northern Uganda, has been living in the UK since 1991 – but her passion for just governance in her homeland is her driving force. In 1986, it was her voice, as a refugee in Juba, South Sudan, which alerted the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, to what was going on in the villages of northern Uganda, where the army was looting, destroying crops and attacking civilians. As a result the agency set up refugee camps for Ugandans fleeing to South Sudan seeking safety. ‘Change of government in my homeland has mainly been through violence pitting one tribe or region against another,’ says Josephine. ‘In January 1986, the current government took power by force. They exploited the divides between ethnic groups, especially the progressive south against the marginalized north. They began a harsh repression in the north, arresting former government officials and replacing them with people from the president’s tribe and waging war on the civilian population.’ As the situation escalated, Josephine left her home in
later. Her children were scattered but managed to escape. She speaks of the rape of women and also men, often in front of their children, and of a ‘systematic’ focus on women peacemakers. Men found that they ‘had no place’ in their community after being ‘completely humiliated and destroyed’. ‘People have so many stories but we find it difficult to discuss. It’s not something we want to revisit.’ The violence has ‘silenced people from speaking up and calling for accountability and reconciliation’.
‘This change must be peaceful.’ An agriculturalist by training, Josephine is one of a growing number of women leaders to emerge out of the chaotic political scene of northern Uganda. ‘Before the war pushed me out, the village was free and a safe place to grow up and live,’ she says. ‘I was running an internationally-sponsored project to supply subsidized farming implements to rural farmers and teach them what food crops to grow.’ The international perception has been that peace, tranquillity and economic success have returned to northern Uganda in recent years, but Josephine says that the abuses continue. She is determined to keep up the fight for human security in her homeland, and throughout Africa’s Great Lakes region. ‘I can’t give up,’ she says. ‘I keep talking and I keep asking questions.’
Today, Josephine is one of the ten founder members of the Ugandan Sustainable Development Initiative (USDI), which has been created by the diaspora in the UK to educate people about Uganda and advocate for change. ‘The way things are happening, we see the potential for violence, but this change must be peaceful,’ she says. ‘People have got so many emotional and psychological injuries.’ ‘My journey is to see Uganda peacefully returned to civilian democratic government, where the rights, interest and welfare of all Ugandans are protected and promoted,’ she continues. She calls for ‘just governance, social and economic inclusion, ethical leadership, acknowledgement of injuries and victims and genuine reconciliation, and the protection of disappearing rainforest and wildlife, so people can begin to rebuild their lives’. Josephine is an alumna of IofC UK’s Refugees as Re-Builders™ course, which, she says, taught her the importance of community cohesion and of listening. ‘Our communities try to work together but the amount of issues at home is so devastating. People keep getting into individual bitterness. We need to listen to each other so we know what the other person is feeling. This can help us understand where things went wrong and what can be done.’ In spite of all she had been through, she maintains a strong faith in the fundamental ‘goodness of people’ and of humanity. She draws her strength, she says, from her memories of ‘a very happy childhood’ before the war, in a village that was ‘a free place’. She speaks of her people’s deep attachment to trees and the land. ‘Everyone needs a place like that,’ she says.
Village in Northern Uganda
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Changemakers | 11
Pearl Leadership Institute summer camp
Unlocking the pearl inside Tsegga Medhin Seyoum places a pair of pearl earrings in the palm of my hand. ‘Being valuable is one of the most important elements in humanity,’ she says. Like a pearl ‘we all go through the various impurities in life’ and at some point ‘emerge transformed and valuable’. Tsegga is the founder of the Pearl Leadership Institute (TPLI), based in North Carolina, which educates and mentors girls in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) careers. ‘When girls can serve themselves better, they can better serve their communities.’ Each year, the institute sponsors three summer camps for 60 girls from marginalised communities. She comments: ‘We value science, because that is where the living wages are.’
The institute is named after her sister, Lul, whose name means ‘pearl’ and who lives in London. ‘She is one of my biggest pearls,’ she smiles. The institute is a leadership forum ‘amongst sisters’ and aims to help young women ‘unlock the pearl inside’. Tsegga says her commitment to community service and empowerment was her ‘parents’ gift’ to her as a child growing up in Eritrea (then part of Ethiopia). Her father had a deep awareness of women’s potential and contribution to society. Each Saturday, she and Lul visited their local community centre to distribute milk formula to mothers and children in need. Her mother’s resilience, wisdom and humility earned her the family name of Embeytey (our queen). She taught
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Photo: Courtesy of the Pearl Leadership Institute
Tsegga Medhin Seyoum is passionate about empowering girls through science and technology. She talks with Yee-Liu Williams.
her daughters three key values that are at the ‘core of our being’ – ‘to give back’ (life is not about receiving at all times); ‘to stand up’ and be a life changer; ‘to listen’, also to what is not being said, so you can engage and disarm your critics wisely. In 1977, Tsegga fled Eritrea, which was then engaged in a 30-year struggle for independence from Ethiopia. ‘Dad was in prison and far away from home. It was rough and tough.’ She remembers her desperation to make sure none of her family could be connected with her escape, for fear of reprisals. ‘I left alone with a box of pictures in my hand.’ Tsegga was granted political asylum in the UK and, in 1981, she moved to the US and did an MBA in Women’s Leadership from UCLA. She worked for IBM for 20 years and volunteered in Tanzania as part of the company’s corporate social responsibility plan. Working with children who had ‘far less than any of us’ convinced her that her path lay outside the corporate world. ‘I knew there was something bigger than myself that I could achieve’.
‘I left alone with a box of pictures.’
‘We need to move from a think tank to a do tank.’ She sees empowerment as a national security issue, as well as an economic development issue. ‘Unlocking the pearl inside girls and women is needed to move us from tweets to the streets, from echo chambers to the chambers of congress, senate, courts and the White House. That is the essence of empowerment for people, peace, prosperity and the planet.’ thepearlleadershipinstitute.org
Photos: Tsegga Seyoum and Yee-Liu Williams
She now describes herself as a ‘global relations expert’, a speaker and consultant on societal advancement in corporate social responsibility worldwide. In 2013, she was awarded the President’s Volunteer Service Award. In 2015, she was invited to address the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Strategy Plan on the eradication of poverty for women and girls. Of the 17 SDGs, she says that SDG 4 (quality education) and SDG 5 (gender equality) are the ones to which she relates most strongly. ‘By empowering women we can bring about a sustainable socioeconomic transformation that begins with self-value,’ she says. She has seen a lot of lip service paid to hiring women so as to have a great ‘score card’. But there is more to gender equality than this, she observes. She challenges all women to face up to pay disparity. ‘Women’s empowerment and pay equity is not only the right thing to do, but the economic thing to do,’ she says,
quoting a McKinsey Institute report which says that it could add 12 trillion USD to the global economy. She acknowledges what the #metoo movement has done to raise awareness and stimulate discussion about gender issues. ‘However a longterm strategy is needed to permanently break barriers to gender equity. We must also educate parents as to how to raise our boys so they can become champions for change. I want women and men to become part of the conversation on women’s issues. When we include everybody, things start to happen.’ She is adamant that equality is more than equal pay and righting the injustices. It is also about the way companies govern themselves. ‘I see so many people saying a lot of things and not doing anything,’ she says. ‘We have to move from a think tank to a do tank.’
TPLI bringing young girls closer to leadership at UN ‘claiming our power’ event in North Carolina.
Tsegga and Lul Seyoum at Caux Forum 2018
Iman Al Ghafari
Living peace in Syria When Iman Al Ghafari returned to Syria after studying in Canada, she began to run Creators of Peace Circles for women in Damascus. She talks to Kate Monkhouse about preparing for peace in a time of war. In IofC’s Creators of Peace programme, we identify the problems, and then as a group we discuss what we can do. We encourage people to dump out all their worries, to sort them out, look at where they don’t have any control and where they can do something. What are my responsibilities, what can I do? So, we ran some programmes in the shelters for families who had been evacuated and we also joined other charities to work with orphans. We also get war widows involved in Creators of Peace programmes to give them a chance to contribute.
‘Either we raise hatred and anger or we build peace.’ Each woman has strengths and skills, but because we don’t talk about them, we tend to ignore the parts of ourselves that can create change. By sitting together
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Photo: Roger Way
Living peace in Canada is so different to living peace in Syria. I learnt about peace in a place where I could apply whatever ideas I wanted, where dreams can be achieved because there are no hindrances apart from oneself. I went to Canada to learn about education, but I learned about peacebuilding and integration through experiencing life as an immigrant. When I went back to Syria, I thought, how can I apply peace? Thank God, we don’t have war! A few months later the war broke out and I found myself in a chaotic situation. When bloodshed is everywhere and pain is spreading around, you need something to lean on. Peacebuilding is a medicine that brings faith and hope. It is not easy to tell a person who has lost their loved ones or their fortune to think about peace. Actually, it is provocative! It is like a denial of their suffering. But you have two options, either to continue with the pain or to try to swim towards a safe beach. We need to be careful about who is ready for peacebuilding in their lives and who is not. If you raise the issue in the wrong way, it won’t create peace but resistance.
and talking about what we can do, trying to find healing, we strengthen ourselves and one another. Then we can build our countries. We can start small, in our neighbourhood, a centre near to us. It expands. When we sit together, we put our political attitudes and certainties aside. We meet as human beings and learners, as people who want to make a difference in their lives. Having this intention makes a big difference. Of course, we also try to have some fun! At the end of each programme, we have a potluck dinner and play music. Other times, we go to the park, walk together and do some yoga or meditation. Spending time together in quiet reflection is essential. We go deep into ourselves and pour out our emotions, freely and honestly. That really makes a big difference. It is essential to have hope that tomorrow is a better day. We need to encourage one another. And to learn to be vulnerable. This is a problem in our culture, you have to be strong. Yet it is OK to be weak, because weakness can help us understand the situation around us, and we can change it into an opportunity. I am an optimistic person. It you look back at history, you will see that after war peace comes. But you have to be ready when peace comes to be a builder.
It is important to learn from war. We need to address problems before they become conflicts, before they lead us to more wars. Violence cannot make peace, violence always makes violence. We need to find win-win solutions so everyone can participate in our country and everyone is concerned about each person. I believe it is
‘Hope is essential.’ going to happen and I hope it happens soon. It is so hard to see your country suffering. When I talk about it, I burst into tears: it breaks my heart. But it is a blessing and honour that God has given me this chance of building peace. We have two choices. Either we raise hatred and anger and excite people to go to war, or we build peace. I thank God everyday that I am used to heal people, to help people to find a safe zone where they can love each other and rebuild their lives. If we start from the person and help them build themselves, we will build Syria. That is my hope. When you are in conflict, all you can do is build peace.
Armed Syrian rebels in the streets of Damascus 2017
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Changemakers | 15
Family affair Samiya Lerew talks to Yee-Liu Williams about the challenges facing British-Somali families, FGM, and graduating on the same day as her son. daughters, Simman and Elizabeth, and son, Edwin, are not just her children but also her ‘friends’.
‘ Young people lose their way between divided worlds.’ In 2014, Samiya applied to Birkbeck, University of London, to read Global Politics and International Relations. ‘I was delighted when I was accepted at the same university as Edwin,’ she says. The decision to study politics was partly to support her advocacy work for the Somali marginalised community. ‘I have always found it difficult to cut through the red tape unless I had “BA (Hons)” next to my name.’ She also saw it as a way of supporting Edwin with his education: she is convinced that gender inequality harms men as much as women. When mother and son graduated on the same day in 2017, the story was carried by the BBC. British Somali parents in the UK are often unable to understand the challenges facing their children, or to
Photo: Roger Way
‘Parents are not in touch with the younger generation and families are growing apart,’ laments Samiya Lerew. She says that Somali-British suffer from a torn identity. First generation emigrants are scattered in ‘little bubbles of Somalia’ across the world, with their umbilical cord to home ruptured. Samiya describes herself as ‘a product of colonisation’. Her grandfather was a politician, when Somalia and Eritrea were under Italian rule. Her mother was a Somali celebrity, a singer and broadcaster with Radio Mogadishu, and her father an Eritrean lawyer. ‘I am a beizani (a townie),’ she says. In her childhood, Mogadishu was a peaceful, multicultural, thriving hub. ‘It was an era of “modernity”, and women and girls had equal rights and relative freedom,’ she says nostalgically. In 1982, Samiya came to the UK to study English and train in secretarial and administrative studies. But when her stepfather died, she was unable to continue her education. She felt obliged to find full-time work to support her widowed mother. She met her English husband while working for the Manpower Unit at the YMCA in Hornsey. She went on to work as a rate rebate officer at Haringey Council. Today, she lives in Barnet, north London. She values the fact that her two
Samiya Lerew
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assist them, she says. Edwin, now 25, was picked on at school because he was ‘different’. As Somali youth adopt relatively more liberal Western belief-systems, tensions intensify in their families. Mothers will often ‘enforce’ their sons to go to the mosque. Young people lose their way between divided worlds. Fear, ignorance and language barriers all widen the intergenerational gap. This is not just an issue for families and the community, Samiya maintains, but also one that the government needs to understand. She believes that the key to political and social stability in Somalia is to break through tribal traditions. She explains that Somalis are made up of multiple clan groupings, whose relations play a central part in culture and politics. These clans are patrilineal and divided into many sub-clan divisions, which fight and discriminate against each other. She tells me the painful story of how her fiancé in Somalia broke off their engagement, because Samiya’s mother came from the wrong caste and clan. Her advocacy work focuses on helping resolve conflict between the many marginalised groups in the rural areas of Somalia. She tells me about the extreme poverty and land grabbing, and its effect on people whose lives rarely extend beyond family, tribe and village. Somalia still lags behind other developing countries in defining frameworks that safeguard the interests of minorities, she comments. We talk about the controversial custom of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), now a high-profile women’s rights issue. The demand for ‘circumcised wives’ is high, she explains, and mothers feel compelled put their daughters through this procedure. ‘Women circumcise
The cycle will continue, she says, unless both young men and young women are educated on its cost. But she believes women are the ones to bring about change. When she got married she said: ‘No circumcision comes to my family.’ She adds, ‘I would not do to my daughters what was done to me’.’
Mogadishu, Somalia, before the war.
Mother and son graduating in 2017
Samiya, centre, with her family
their daughters out of love. It is the price they pay for their daughter to be marriageable.’ ‘The education for boys is inadequate,’ she goes on. ‘They are unaware of the negative impact that FGM has on women and their society.’ Young men have been passively indoctrinated that brides are only desirable if they have been ‘stitched’.
Photos: Courtesy of Samiya Lerew
‘No circumcision comes to my family.’
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Changemakers | 17
Running with the bishop Barbara Down is a few months into her role as Lady Mayoress of Newcastle upon Tyne. She talks to Jacqui Daukes. Thompson – the Chancellor of Northumbria University and former Paralympic athlete – at a graduation dinner and found her ‘really inspirational’. She has learnt how not to be thrown by someone having a title. ‘I can now even enjoy a meal at a table full of university professors once I have figured out what we have in common – quite often family life!’
‘Some of the times I have been most ner vous about have been the most precious.’ When David opened the wheelchair race of the Great North Run, Barbara met Kathrine Switzer, who was there to start the main road race. Kathrine was the first woman to run in the Boston Marathon in 1967. A male official tried to pull her out of the race (she had applied using her initials), but her boyfriend and other
Photo: Steve Brock
When David Down became Lord Mayor of Newcastle upon Tyne in May, his wife Barbara found herself pushed into the limelight, supporting him in his official duties. ‘I’m someone who doesn’t want much attention paid to me,’ she says. But, to her surprise, she’s relishing the chance to connect with people from all areas of the city’s life. David’s duties include welcoming royalty, foreign mayors and diplomats to the city, unveiling plaques, speaking in schools and visiting community- and volunteer-led projects and charities. One regular event is the monthly Citizenship Ceremony in the Banqueting Hall of Newcastle’s Civic Centre, when the Lord Mayor formally welcomes people from different parts of the world as they become British citizens. Barbara loves getting to know people over tea after the ceremony. Barbara, who is Head of Personnel with Initiatives of Change (IofC) UK, sees her role as encouraging, helping and supporting David. ‘Being a nurse and later working with IofC has helped prepare me, as my work involved caring for people.’ Even so, the new position has been a challenge. ‘Initially I was apprehensive about talking to important people,’ she says. ‘However some of the times I have been most nervous about have turned out to be the most precious.’ She sat next to Baroness Tanni Grey-
Start of the annual interfaith City for Peace march, Newcastle
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Barbara Down
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sleep rough as all benefits, including accommodation, cease if they lose their asylum application, even if they are appealing against the decision. I met a young Syrian doctor who had recently arrived in the UK on top of a lorry. He showed me a photo of his wife and new baby – she couldn’t accompany him as she was about to give birth. Now when I go food shopping I am very aware that I could be spending in that one trip what the asylum seekers might have to exist on for a whole week.’
‘I had no idea so many things were going on in Newcastle.’ These visits are giving Barbara ideas about what she could get involved in when she retires. ‘I had no idea so many things were going on in Newcastle. It would be great to contribute in some way.’ Asked what she is learning from all these encounters, she replies, ‘We’re all the same underneath and if you believe in something you can approach anyone and talk about it. We can surprise ourselves at how much we have to give. One of the highlights of the year so far has been meeting people a bit like me, who believe they can’t do much, and encouraging them to be a bit more daring.’ Changemakers | 19
Photo: Laura Noble
runners intervened and Kathrine completed the race. ‘Kathrine challenged me to do the Great North Run next year. I accepted, even though to begin with I couldn’t even run around the block! One of the other folk at the start of the race was the Bishop of Newcastle and to my surprise the following week she offered to train me. We now go running together once a week using the NHS app Couch to 5K.’ Barbara also goes running with two other women as well. Barbara finds much interest in her work with Initiatives of Change. ‘I was unexpectedly asked to say something at a Muslim academy school for girls. I found myself looking at the young women at the back of the hall and Creators of Peace, one of IofC’s programmes, immediately came into my thinking. I talked about women being peacemakers, starting in the home and local community.’ Barbara and a friend hope to train to run Creators of Peace Circles, small community gatherings where women work through material designed to deepen their understanding of each other and their role as peacemakers. Several of the women at the academy said they would be interested in participating. Another unforgettable visit was to a Roman Catholic run project, which cares for asylum seekers and refugees. ‘We met amazing volunteers who regularly support them with small amounts of money, English classes, food and clothes. Many have to sofa-surf or
Thembi Cecilia Silundika
Stand your ground Thembi Cecilia Silundika tells Aleksandra Shymina about three Russian women who have influenced her life.
How did you come to be interested in women’s issues? I come from a matriarchal family in Zimbabwe. My father was a political leader in exile, so my mother and aunties were my role models. When I was 16 I received a scholarship to study in Moscow, named after Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to go into space. When I got to Moscow, I was privileged to meet Valentina, an amazing woman from a poor background who had left school at an early age to work in a textile mill. She rose to be a youth community leader with a passion for parachuting. In 1962, the Soviet Air Force recruited 50 cosmonauts to join a new space programme; she was one of the first five picked. In 1963, aged 26, she was blasted into space aboard Vastok 6.
For me as a teenager receiving the Valentina Tereshkova scholarship and meeting her in person set the bar very high. I did not speak a word of Russian at the beginning, but learnt the language well enough to complete a Masters Degree in Chemistry a few years later. At the university, I was a member of the Women’s Committee. We learnt about the role of women in society and their struggles in different countries.
‘They are just who they are.’ As part of the International Development Research Council of Canada, I submitted a paper on women’s health in Africa to the UN World Conference for Women in Beijing in 1995. I was one of 17,000 participants and 30,000 activists who attended, sharing a dream of gender equality and the empowerment of all women everywhere. I was inspired by the energy and realized that this dream was an important passion for me.
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Photo: Laura Noble
In 22 years of public service in Canada, Thembi Cecilia Silundika has focused on promoting cooperation, sustainable development and entrepreneurship around the Arctic, as Senior Circumpolar Analyst at Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). In 2017, she was awarded an ‘Iconic Woman – Creating a Better World for All’ Award at the Women Economic Forum in India.
Your work in development focuses mainly on the northern regions and indigenous communities. Can you share a story from your work? Two nomadic women of Siberia have had a big influence on me. I was leading a delegation of artists, who were visiting communities in Siberia. We met these women, who make beautiful crafts. They live in the tundra half the year, following the reindeer. They make winter coats for the family from reindeer skins. I spent some time in the tundra with them and we got really close.
‘Respect your uniqueness.’
In all these years that you have been involved with women’s work, have things got better? It’s like a spiral. The issues will always be the same. But our voices are stronger and the means with which we can make ourselves heard are better. Violence against women will always be there, but countries have awoken to the fact that it is wrong and put in measures to prevent it. The same issues are being shifted in a much more powerful way. What is your message to young women in an era of social media? It is as basic as being self-aware. You are a unique individual and you have a purpose. What are your strengths? What is your passion and what do you do about it? Speak your truth. Stand your ground. Respect your uniqueness. Don’t follow the crowd. When we were growing up we didn’t have social media. But we had peers who tried to influence us: those were crowds as well. Now the crowds have become bigger and they come right through to the phone in your hand. You need to be self-aware, stand your ground, know your purpose, your passion, your place in life. Then even when there is a lot of wind and your sails wave left and right, you still stay centred and anchored.
Photos: Courtesy of Thembi Cecilia Silundika
We brought them to Canada with a delegation of women. Urban life for them is intimidating. But they have been able to reconcile with modernity as something that exists but does not interfere with their worldview. They are just who they are, living the way their ancestors always have. I realised that you don’t need to be anything else than yourself in life. I also appreciated their nonmaterialist view. They only buy what they consume, because when they move from one settlement to another, they have to pack everything, including a tipi, on one sleigh. They can’t carry more than they need. It
reminded me of my own family back in Zimbabwe.
They live in the tundra half the year, following the reindeer.
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Changemakers | 21
Helena Salazar de von Arnim
My own best friend Helena Salazar de von Arnim is a survivor of child abuse. For her, forgiveness was the path to freedom. and how she had wanted Germany wiped out from the face of the earth.
‘In a world made by men for men, I had no chance of being believed.’ I had also wanted a lot of people obliterated from the planet, starting with my cousin and my brother. In fact, all the people I blamed for the awful situation which had engulfed me since I was six. I had lived with feelings of crushing, overwhelming terror and worthlessness, of having no one to explain something I didn’t even have the correct vocabulary to express. For from when I was six, an older cousin
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Photo: Siegrid von Arnim Salazar
I was born in 1941 in Bogotá, Colombia. My husband and I have five children, 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. My father was a visionary who foresaw that the world was going to become smaller and smaller. He thought his children should be prepared so he sent us to schools where foreign languages were taught. My mother was a practical woman with a marvellous sense of humour. She taught us to see things as they are. In 1980, I encountered the idea that it is possible to change the world, if you just choose to start with your own self. You didn’t need diplomas, PhDs, money, power or influence. Even children or old people could have a part at their own rhythm. All this could happen just by learning to listen to the soft voice of truth inside one’s heart. Then I saw a film about a World War II French socialist leader and MP from Marseilles. I started crying, very softly, for I could see my life through hers, like in a mirror. She was talking about the huge hate she had had
systematically raped me, year after year. He was about 12 when it began. I was not able to defend myself. I knew that in a world made by men for men, I had no chance of being believed or understood. I already knew this from experiences with my younger brother. He always managed to have me punished for whatever he did wrong. My cousin used to say, ‘If you dare say anything about this, remember it is your word against mine. I’m a man and you’re only a stupid, good-for-nothing, little girl!’ So I never had the courage to say anything to anybody. It was only when, at the age of 19, he went to study abroad that, at last, things changed for me. But by then I was so angry and full of hatred, I wanted to take vengeance on the whole world. Watching the film, my hate against myself for being a woman came out. I just couldn’t live with myself, especially with this huge lie that my life had become – all the tricks, the cover-ups, the pretence so that people would never know the truth I was so ashamed of. I tried hard to appear happy and fulfilled. But inside me, a secret, disastrous tragedy was being lived out. Then I heard the Frenchwoman say in the film, ‘You cannot forget, but you can forgive.’ It was as if she knew I was there, and she personally wanted to say those words to me. Warmth grew inside my tired, lonely heart – the sensation of a vast ray of light beaming into my mind and soul, and a huge space opening around and inside me. I felt free, as I had never felt before. But then I had this awful feeling that I needed to forgive those I had hated for so long. It seemed like committing treason against myself. I had been so
angry for such a long time, that I didn’t know how to live otherwise. It took me years to walk very slowly from darkness towards the light. I tried practising inner listening. Measuring my life against absolute standards of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love helped me to get to know myself better, particularly to forgive myself. The worst enemy I had was myself. I used to treat myself with harshness and contempt. Now Helena is Helena’s best and most faithful friend.
‘It seemed like committing treason against myself.’ For the next five years the thoughts that came to me in my times of silence were the names of people I needed to forgive. What a big surprise it was to find out that I also needed to ask them for their forgiveness for my ill will against them and for my desire for revenge. This experience changed my life completely. I wanted to go around the world to tell people about the possibility of a new life; that everybody could find it, and that’s what I am still doing at the age of 78! This article is abridged from ‘Beyond Walls through Initiatives of Change’, a collection of first person experiences collected by Suresh Khatri. Available for £6.00 from shop.iofc.org
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Read online Pearl Leadership Institute Summer Camp
Unlocking the pearl inside Tsegga Medhin Seyoum places a pair of pearl earrings in the palm of my hand. ‘Being valuable is one of the most important elements in humanity,’ she says. Like a pearl ‘we all go through the various impurities in life’ and at some point ‘emerge transformed and valuable’. Tsegga is the founder of the Pearl Leadership Institute (TPLI), based in North Carolina, which educates and mentors girls in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) careers. ‘When girls can serve themselves better, they can better serve their communities.’ Each year, the institute sponsors three summer camps for 60 girls from marginalised communities. She comments: ‘We value science, because that is where the living wages are.’ 12 | Changemakers
‘I left alone with a box of pictures.’ The institute is named after her sister, Lul, whose name means ‘pearl’ and who lives in London. ‘She is one of my biggest pearls,’ she smiles. The institute is a leadership forum ‘amongst sisters’ and aims to help young women ‘unlock the pearl inside’. Tsegga says her commitment to community service and empowerment was her ‘parent’s gift’ to her as a child growing up in Eritrea (then part of Ethiopia). Her
Photo: Courtesy of the Pearl Leadership Institute
Tsegga Medhin Seyoum is passionate about empowering girls through science and technology. She talks with Yee-Liu Williams.
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‘I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.’ Mother Teresa
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