ISSUE 3 - JULY 2016
THE POWER OF SLOW FROM RAGS TO DIGNITY A LONG WAY FROM HOME
STORIES OF CHANGE
£2.00
Onjali RaĂşf, see page 8
Contents
04
When unshakable faith ignites street peace
06
The power of slow
08
Making Herstory
10
From rags to dignity
12
India’s ray of light
14
A long way from home
16
Planting the future
20
A new Europe
22
Finding my role in the immigration story
Initiatives of Change is a worldwide
Changemakers Magazine
We work to inspire, equip and connect people to address world needs in the areas of trust building, ethical leadership and sustainable living.
Editor: Davina Patel Sub-editor: Mary Lean Designer: Laura Noble Photographers: Yee Liu Williams, Jonty Herman, Laura Noble, Vibeka Venema, Roshni, Abdinasar Ahmed, CAUX-Initiatives of Change Foundation Cover photo: Jonty Herman All rights reserved. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the publishers.
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.
In the UK, Initiatives of Change is a charity registered No. 226334 (England and Wales).
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From the Editor Welcome to
Changemakers
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his time last year we launched Changemakers magazine and what a journey it has been. We have reached over 3,000 people and our stories continue to inspire, equip and connect people to be changemakers. In this issue we hear from Onjali Rauf (p8) whose aunt’s murder motivated her to create a charity that trains ordinary people to spot signs of abuse. Meanwhile Amy Peake (p10) and Pravin Nakim (p12) have been working tirelessly to educate women on menstrual hygiene. Amy is creating solutions to provide cheap hygienic pads in refugee camps while Pravin is removing the stigma attached to periods in India. Jonty Herman (cover and p22) draws on his experience visiting refugee camps in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. For more stories of change, and to subscribe to receive updates, visit our website: www.changemakersmagazine.org
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Davina Patel, Editor comms.uk@iofc.org
Our writers Davina Patel Mary Lean Yee Liu Williams
www.changemakersmagazine.org
Aleksandra Shymina Jonty Herman Francis Evans
Changemakers | 3
WHEN UNSHAKABLE FAITH
IGNITES STREET PEACE
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he founder and director of United Estate of Wythenshawe (UEW), Greg Davis, knows what it is like to face death. There have been several attempts on his life, including a gun to his head that failed to fire. He firmly believes that he could not have survived without God’s intervention and ‘wider plan’ for him. He says that the only reason ‘I am not where God wants me to be’ is because of his own stupidity. After a decade of witnessing the results of guns, gangs and mayhem, Greg sold his security business to develop his vision for UEW, which became the UK’s first Inner City Cultural Centre. It is based in Brownley Methodist Church in Manchester – once dilapidated and vandalised and now transformed into a hub of local social and business activity. It houses a professional gym, therapy rooms, 4 | Changemakers
cinema, barber’s shop and dance studio. Over the last 20 years it has become a place of sanctuary and direction for those commonly labelled ‘yobs or hoodlums’ and pushed onto the fringes of society. Greg describes how the centre has changed lives. Doctors gave Tyson Fury little chance of survival when he was born prematurely, weighing only 1lb. To ‘toughen up’ he trained in the UEW gym after being bullied at school. Today he is a world champion boxer. UEW also sponsors light middleweight boxer Jimmy Kelly. Greg believes in creating ‘reference points’ – around music, boxing, dance, the gym – which will give young people a platform and opportunity to channel energy positively. Greg’s early days working in the security world as a door staff technician – aka bouncer – has made
him a bridge between ‘the world of the local villain and the ministry of God’. He admits that the physical appearance of gang members can be off-putting: ‘Some look out-andout gangsters, very aggressive, but happen to be Christians.’ He tells me: ‘Because I have been involved in the drugs, guns and gangs, I totally get what they are about. I have become an orbit where they ask, “Do you read the Bible?”’ Even the most painful times have not shaken Greg’s faith. His daughter, Ciarra, made national headlines as the first baby baptised in the UK in the new millennium. She had a heart defect, and died in January 2014. ‘That was awful, very painful, a bad time for all the family,’ he says. But he held tenaciously to the belief that ‘God does not make mistakes’. Although he has sometimes turned away, he finds www.changemakersmagazine.org
Photo credit: Yee-Liu Williams
Yee Liu Williams meets an ex-bouncer and part-time Methodist preacher, who believes that celebrating gang culture could be an answer to inner-city crime.
that silence, ‘listening to what God has to say’ and reading the Bible help him to keep going. ‘Bad things still happen, but you accept them, you deal with them.’ He quotes the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree for being unfruitful. He understands this as being about the tree’s failure to live up to the standards it claimed. ‘I do not want to be one of those Christians that looks, smells, sounds, like a Christian but when challenged doesn’t walk the talk,’ he says.
‘I do not want to be one of those Christians that looks, smells, sounds, like a Christian but when challenged doesn’t walk the talk.’
The declining role of the church is of great concern to Greg. Churches in Wythenshawe are targets for vandalism, and three have closed in as many years. This exacerbates a void, which has created a breeding ground for exclusion. Greg believes there is a total lack of understanding of the lives of those who live in rough conditions. School teachers, police officers and youth workers no longer live on the inner city estates, leaving young people with no role models to help them form a moral compass. Is it any wonder that hostile, often violent youth gangs flourish on inner city estates? Everyone needs a sense of belonging and street gangs satisfy such needs. The term ‘hoodies’ originated in Wythenshawe, he says, where young people kept their hoods up to avoid being recognised by the security cameras on most street corners. Greg has a vision of a worldwide
grassroots movement – Street Peace – using music, dancing and drama to raise self-esteem, and to ignite the ideas and dreams of people living in inner cities. ‘Now is the time for some plain honest singing and some plain honest music,’ he says. ‘I want to make a plain honest statement that will make a plain honest difference. We are breaking the politics of the ghetto and building solutions. It’s about taking the energy off the streets that goes into creating, developing and maintaining a gang and channelling it into positive change.’
‘We are breaking the politics of the ghetto and building solutions.’ www.unitedestates.org
UEW ‘reference point’ of the gym, giving young people an opportunity to channel energy positively. www.changemakersmagazine.org
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ROHAN NARSE
‘Every moment
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www.changemakersmagazine.org
Photo credit: Doug Menuez
is a moment to learn’
THE POWER OF
SLOW
Aleksandra Shymina goes for a walk with Rohan Narse, investment banker turned mindfulness proponent. man – in the original sense of the word, derived from the Latin words for ‘against’ and ‘turn’. Ten years ago he turned away from the mainstream culture of ‘me-mine-myself’, leaving his investment banking career in the City of London to walk a different path. The catalyst was a near-fatal car accident which made him question what truly mattered in life. I know his story; I have read his book and articles about him. What I am interested in now is his current journey. I ask him how he engages with the world when he steps out of his ‘programme’. He says he is just being himself. In whatever happens, he is present to the questions, ‘who am I being?’ and ‘am I aware?’ Has he ever considered returning to the corporate world? He laughs: ‘I don’t feel like playing the old game all over again.’ Instead he has gone back
to the City in a different role, helping CEOs and leadership teams to find balance in their lives, through the practice of mindfulness. The core of his message is to become aware of the gap between stimulus and response: to notice what arises as a reaction to an external stimulus and, in the process, observe a gradual slowing down of the mind’s constant tendency to judge. ‘Every moment is a moment to learn,’ he says, ‘but there is no agenda that I need to fix something. In that sense, life has become much more relaxed. Nowhere to go but here. Doing what I enjoy, being who I am and making a difference along the way – isn’t that a blessing?’ He is being a changemaker just by being himself. In a world that is so guarded and fearful, so full of masks, that inspires hope in me.
Rohan talking to CEOs and leadership teams about mindfulness www.changemakersmagazine.org
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Photo credit: Forgather Ink
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e walk in silence. The landscape is awe-inspiring. It is cold; I can see my breath in the air. The sun is rising. We could have taken an even more picturesque route but I left my walking shoes behind. After two hours, we sit at a round wooden table eating a beautifully cooked breakfast: eggs from a neighbour’s farm, avocado from a local market and bread from a bakery nearby. I feel relaxed and rested: I am enjoying myself. This is what Rohan Narse is all about. He inspires ‘the art of the slow’ – being in the present moment. I would have expected lots of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ to come up in my busy mind but they don’t. It’s just what it is – the tasting of deliciously fresh food in the warmth of the cabin in the woods. Rohan Narse is a controversial
MAKING
HERSTORY
A
s we meet at one of Onjali Raúf’s favourite places in London – the Wallace Collection – she tells me that she has been a feminist from a young age, but it was her aunt’s murder that spurred her into action. She founded Making Herstory, a charity which mobilises ‘ordinary’ men and women to take whatever action they can to end the abuse, enslavement and trafficking of women and girls. ‘I grew up in an environment where you were always aware of just how much damage and fear one person can evoke in a family,’ she says. As a child, Onjali witnessed her mother working hard to raise women’s
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awareness of their rights as part of her job, whilst trying to deal with verbal and financial abuse at home. But it was Onjali’s anger at the failure of wider agencies to stop her aunt’s murder, which triggered the creation of Making Herstory. Mumtahina Jannat – or Ruma as she was fondly called – was forced into marriage at the age of 19 to a man two decades her senior. Abdul Kadir had spotted her in her village in Bangladesh. After having his proposal of marriage rejected three times, coerced her impoverished family into handing her over in marriage. Abused and beaten from the night of her wedding, she was forced to move
to the UK in 2000. From within the confines of a council flat, she endured abuse that became increasingly violent with each day. Unable to speak English and with no support at hand, she found herself completely trapped. Surviving abuse during pregnancy and childbirth, she escaped one night following the birth of her second daughter. It became clear that it was not just her life that was at risk, but those of her two little girls. In 2005, fleeing for her life with nothing but her children, Ruma was placed with a women’s shelter. She located the number of a distant relative in London, Onjali’s mother, who she was able to call. www.changemakersmagazine.org
Photo credit: Yee Liu Williams
Onjali Raúf tells Davina Patel why we all need to break the silence surrounding violence against women.
counselling for the guilt she felt. You don’t really ever believe that someone you love will be taken from you in this way. My way of coping is trying to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else. I tell my nieces all the time that Making Herstory is their mother’s legacy - it is their charity.’
‘I tell my nieces all the time that Making Herstory is their mother’s legacy - it is their charity.’
With a motto of doing ‘whatever it can, whenever it can,’ the charity works to put a stop to the abuse of women through any means possible. The charity supports rape victims and acid attack survivors; tours antidomestic violence plays in schools and produces documentary films on the impact of rape in war. It also works with women’s shelters; sends aid missions to refugee camps and works where it can to re-train government officials and wider agencies. ‘We need to make women and girls aware of
their human rights. We need men and boys to explore why violence against women is a default position and sold to us as a norm. We need judges, the police, teachers, GPs and MPs to know and truly understand the different shapes that violence can take. This is not a “women’s issue” – it’s everyone’s issue. We all need to be tackling this epidemic together.’ As well as fighting against gender violence on a global scale, Onjali finds herself battling wars on a personal front too. ‘As a Muslim feminist the hardest thing to deal with is people’s misinterpretations of my faith and who I am,’ she says. ‘When people see me with a scarf on my head at a feminist rally or speaking against misogyny, they get confused. We need to have those difficult and honest conversations to find out how racism, prejudices and misogyny work on all levels. And how integral all of it is to the murders, rapes and abuses of women the world over at the hands of men or male-led systems. There are too many mothers, sisters, aunts, daughters and amazing women dying for us not to.’ www.makingherstory.org.uk
Tunbridge Wells: ‘Make it Happen’ event www.changemakersmagazine.org
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Photo credit: Making Herstory
Million Women Rise demonstration, 9 March 2013, London
‘Even though we had never known of her existence until the moment she called, my mum immediately began working to help her,’ says Onjali. ‘The next five years was spent reestablishing her life, getting her kids settled and safe, and helping her fight for her divorce.’ Despite her attempts, Ruma’s impoverished legal standing could not compete against Abdul’s rich one. ‘He had the money to hire lawyers and the knowledge of how to manipulate the system. He made her life miserable by refusing a divorce, challenging the custody of their children, mocking her as he attended anger management classes – whilst she struggled on with legal aid and no support other than us and a women’s aid agency.’ Despite all her efforts to secure freedom and safety, on July 5th 2011, Ruma was murdered in the bedroom of her own home. Abdul had forced his way into the house and strangled her with her own scarf. Police later found out he had tried to set the scene so it looked like she had attacked him first. She was 29. Onjali’s family continue to live with the trauma of Ruma’s murder. ‘My mum underwent three years of
FROM RAGS
TO DIGNITY
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picture in a magazine in a doctor’s surgery launched Amy Peake on a mission to transform the lives of millions of refugee women. When she saw the photo of 25,000 people queuing for food in a refugee camp in Damascus, she thought, ‘How would I cope with no food, no water, no shelter, no access to medicine? What if my husband had been killed and I had to fend for my children alone?’ And then she thought, ‘And what if I had my period?’ Since March 2014, this question has taken the Pilates teacher and mother of three from Cornwall to Jordan, India and Turkey. In Za’atari Refugee Camp in Jordan, home to
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some 100,000 Syrian refugees, she discovered that women cannot afford to buy the expensive, poor quality sanitary pads available in the camp shops. Instead they use rags, which can lead to infection, because of the lack of soap and privacy to wash them properly. Agencies distribute pads, but only infrequently and only to 14- to 40-year-olds. She also discovered a second problem: incontinence. While agencies provide nappies for babies, there is no provision for traumatised older children who bedwet. Adult nappies are needed for the disabled and elderly. She met a woman with four disabled children, who she had to carry to the communal toilets when
she could not afford to buy pads. In a search for solutions, Amy travelled to Tamil Nadu, India, to meet Arunachalam Muruganantham, the inventor of a revolutionary low-cost sanitary pad machine. Further research took her to Swati and Shyam Bedekar in Gujarat, who have adapted his prototype to use cheaper materials and produce larger pads. The Bedekars will provide the machines for a pilot project in Za’atari which will employ refugee women to manufacture sanitary towels and incontinence pads. Meanwhile, she has been working on a second pilot project, to produce re-usable nappies for babies, children and adults. These don’t www.changemakersmagazine.org
Photo credit: Vibeka Venema
The lack of sanitary protection adds to the misery of women refugees. Amy Peake has found a solution. She talks to Mary Lean.
camp and giving away the pads. ‘It will save them millions of pounds, just on adult nappies. It costs them so much to supply them that in some instances they have stopped altogether.’ Her dream is that they will extend the project to refugee camps all over the world.
‘If I can imagine it in my brain then I know I can create it.’ How has she coped with the frustrations and setbacks of the last two years? ‘I just keep taking the next step forward,’ she says. Amazingly, she doesn’t have sleepless nights, though she tends to do her ‘creative brain work’ lying in bed, last thing at night or first thing in the morning. ‘If I can imagine it in my brain then I know I can create it. The only thing I find really necessary is to give myself the space alone to be able to dream.’ Her daughters, aged 12, 10 and six, have adapted to her absences, which she points out have built up slowly, and usually only last a week at a time. ‘To begin with there were tears, which we all found really hard,
but they’re getting used to it and know I am coming home. I think we will all be stronger and better for it.’ Her husband, Tom, and her mother are ‘massively supportive’. She will go back to Jordan soon to sign the paperwork handing the project over to NRC. This will free her to look at possibilities in Turkey and Lebanon, and further afield. Since the BBC took up her story in December 2015, she has had enquiries from people in 22 countries, all wanting to get the sanitary towel machines into their communities. Menstrual hygiene is not only an issue in refugee camps. A survey in 2011 found that only 12 per cent of women in India use sanitary towels. Inadequate and unhygienic alternatives keep girls in poor rural communities away from school, and cause 70 per cent of reproductive diseases in India. Women all over Africa, Asia and Latin America face similar problems. ‘This invention is the most brilliant solution to helping girls get educated,’ says Amy. ‘Ultimately that will completely change the world. There’s no way I am going to drop the bone.’ www.lovinghumanity.org.uk
Community Money Advice www.changemakersmagazine.org
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Photo credit: Picture courtesy of Amy Peake
Amy with refugees in Za’atari, Jordan
need special machinery, just sewing machines, which she is buying now. A manufacturer in Turkey sold her the materials needed to make up to 40,000 nappies, at a ‘ridiculously good price’. ‘He put a nappy factory in a container and sent it to the camp.’ The project has the backing of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and will be run by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). ‘The UN have given us a massive tent, their old gas distribution centre. The floor is being concreted this week. The cutting tables and sewing machines will be in portakabins. UNHCR will pay 15 of the most vulnerable women – heads of households who are caring for their families alone – to do the work.’ While she was in Za’atari in April the first prototype nappy was produced and, by the time you read this, the factory will be running. Her charity, Loving Humanity, has raised enough money to buy the materials and machinery for both pilot projects in Za’atari. (Amy covers her own travel costs from her savings and Pilates earnings.) She hopes that in the future UNHCR and NRC will carry the projects forward, buying the raw materials, employing women from the
INDIA’S RAY OF
LIGHT
Davina Patel meets an unlikely champion of women’s health and rights.
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National Youth Award; a Global Youth Ambassador for A World at School, launched by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Gordon Brown; and being named a Global Shaper by a World Economic Forum initiative. He is also the Asian representative on the Commonwealth Youth Council. I caught up with him in London where he was taking part in Commonwealth Youth Leadership training. Earlier that week he had met the Queen, and talked to her for 15 minutes about periods. He was told it was ‘surprising’ for the Queen to spend that much time talking to someone – especially on that subject. He told the Queen that menstrual health was a cause the
Commonwealth, with its many Asian and African members, needed to take up. ‘In Nepal they have this custom called chhaupadi, where a woman has to live in a cowshed while she menstruates. Twenty-three per cent of girls in India drop out of school when they are aged 14 or 15 because of periods.’ Since that meeting Pravin has been working on a draft policy document and toolkit on the issue for Commonwealth countries. Before setting up Roshni, Pravin took time out of his degree to visit slums and find out what it means to have periods. He trained in menstrual hygiene and started conducting activity-based workshops using theatre and science to help young people revalue menstruation as a
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www.changemakersmagazine.org
Photo credit: Roshni
Women teaching women about the female reproductive system
hen Pravin Nikam met Roshni in Shuklai, Assam, in 2011, she was sitting in front of a wooden machine weaving a silk sari. When he asked why she wasn’t at school, she replied, ‘I am punished by God so I don’t go to school’. Later her father explained that she was menstruating, and that when girls had their periods they were kept at home ‘because they are punished by God’. This encounter spurred 22-yearold Pravin to drop out of engineering and study social science. He set up an NGO, named after Roshni, to educate children and improve women’s health. The name means ‘ray of light’. His work has led to him becoming the youngest recipient of India’s
clean and natural biological process. His aim is to remove the stigma attached to periods. In 2012, Roshni started a unit in a slum where women manufacture sanitary pads and receive the profits. ‘Even today,’ he says, ‘women believe that the gods will get angry if they use sanitary protection.’ He has helped thousands of teenagers to break this taboo and become empowered young women. The next challenge was to reach the mothers of these teenagers. He came up with the idea of setting up a unit to manufacture paper bags. ‘Meeting Roshni gave me a different perspective on the gender roles that are preconditioned in Indian society,’ he says. ‘Traditionally women are seen as the homemaker and the men being the provider. A woman, who used to sit at home in a slum cleaning utensils, can easily make 20 paper bags a day. One paper bag can be sold for three rupees. We initially trained 50 women and after six months we had achieved a monthly turnover of 30,000 rupees.’ Pravin has given the ownership of www.changemakersmagazine.org
the paper bag unit to the community leaders who train other women to work there.
‘Meeting Roshni gave me a different perspective on the gender roles that are preconditioned in Indian society. Traditionally women are seen as the homemaker and the men being the provider.’ Pravin has mobilised hundreds of young volunteers in projects to strengthen and improve living conditions. His Right to Pee campaign in 2011 fought for public toilets for women and fairer gender budgeting and gathered young people to clean up existing toilet blocks. More than 60 organisations across India are now engaged in Right to Pee. Another project focuses on
the rights of disabled people and blind students. As a student, Pravin volunteered to support a blind student at his university in Pune. ‘Under government policy the university is mandated to provide readers and writers to blind students, but this wasn’t happening.’ He took it upon himself to start a helpline for blind students who needed readers and writers and now has a team of 200 volunteers. ‘We also teach blind students how to play music and how to play cricket,’ he says. Pravin’s NGO has changed tens of thousands of lives, including training 50,000 women. He has been back to Shuklai to find the girl who triggered it all, but without success. In 2011, some 500 villages in Assam were destroyed in rioting, and 400,000 people displaced. ‘I was told that Roshni’s family had migrated, but I am not sure if they are alive,’ says Pravin. Roshni may never know the impact she had on Pravin, but through the NGO that carries her name, she is helping change society for the better. Changemakers | 13
Photo credit: Roshni
Pravin Nikam, Founder of Roshni, facilitating a training session on menstruation hygiene
A LONG WAY FROM
HOME
Yee Liu Williams meets Shabibi Shah, whose books are ‘a simple cry’ for the world’s refugees. even feel able to talk freely in our own homes.’ Unable to tolerate the repressive regime, Zafar continued to write and secretly distributed his work. He suffered a mental breakdown, spent eight months in prison while Shabibi fought for his freedom, and after his release finally escaped to Pakistan, leaving the family to follow him. Even when they were reunited in Pakistan, they did not feel safe. ‘All Afghan women were watched by the Mujahideen, who had full control of us. We had to be very cautious.’ They were desperate to find the security and freedom that is taken for granted in Europe. ‘Miraculously’, a stranger arrived from England to help them. Joseph Glassburg, a Jew whose parents had escaped from Nazi Germany when he was a baby, had heard about Zafar’s plight from mutual friends in
America. ‘How could it be that in this materialistic world, a stranger would go to all this trouble and expense to travel to Pakistan to help a family of Muslims he did not even know?’ asks Shabibi. ‘Had not the people of our two religions been enemies for centuries?’ Joseph arranged for the necessary documentation for the family to come to Britain.
‘How could it be that in this materialistic world, a stranger would go to all this trouble and expense to travel to Pakistan to help a family of Muslims he did not even know?’
Hayaan fortnightly meeting in Brent 14 | Changemakers
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Photo credit: Yee Liu Williams
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habibi Shah’s voice trembles as she describes ‘the most terrible journey you can imagine’, her 15-day escape across the Khyber Pass from Afghanistan to Pakistan in 1982. She struggled barefoot through rain and mud and crawled across rocks and boulders. ‘I thought the sky was crying too for this fugitive woman with her three young children who had come to find a new country for ourselves. I will never forget my beautiful homeland.’ Shabibi knows only too well what today’s refugees are going through. Her memoir, Where do I belong, tells a story of resilience and resolution. Her husband, Zafar, worked as a political journalist in Kabul. Under the Soviet-backed communist regime, freedom of speech was not allowed. ‘Suddenly it felt as though every word we uttered risked being heard by a spy. We didn’t
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became refugees.’ She says that her strongest motivation for learning English was that she ‘wanted to help other refugees like myself’. She is now chair of the Afghan community organisation, Paiwand, which supports the Afghan diaspora in the UK. Shabibi’s recently published novel, Innocent Deception, tells the story of Afghan refugees, including a boy who arrives in the UK as an ‘unaccompanied minor’. She has fostered four such children, one after the other. ‘All boys who come this way have no papers,’ she says. ‘Most of them do not know their date of birth. In Afghanistan parents cannot record their birth date, they are either illiterate or struggling to survive.’
‘My book is a simple cry for myself and my people who died, suffered, lost their children, became disabled, were widowed and became refugees.’
Innocent Deception is available from:
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She feels the plight of today’s refugees deeply. After a visit to the Jungle in Calais, she wrote, ‘I don’t know why they call this place “the Jungle”. I thought animals lived in a jungle. Those displaced, dispossessed, traumatised faces did not belong to animals but to decent human beings who have been robbed by powerful corrupt politicians in their own countries and neglected by the world. They didn’t choose to live in these conditions.’ She could not help crying for the children and teenagers she met in Calais. One young man saw her distress and hugged her, ‘Mother, mother, don’t cry, God will help us somehow one day,’ he said. ‘He was trying to comfort me,’ says Shabibi. Changemakers | 15
Photo credit: Yee Liu Williams
They arrived in 1984. The children quickly settled into their new life, learning the language and making friends, but it took Shabibi over 10 years before she was motivated to learn the language and make new friends. Further tragedy struck in July 1992, when a gang of English youths murdered Zafar’s nephew, Ruhullah, in South London. He was 24 years old, gentle and peace-loving, with plans to become a doctor. Shabibi talks of the inconsolable grief and senseless futility that her family suffered: ‘Perhaps it was his destiny that dragged him all the way from our wartorn country to lie in a pool of blood and die on the streets of a civilised one.’ In September 1993, Zafar died after seven months in hospital, following a stroke. His death created ‘such an awful feeling of hopelessness that I thought my heart would burst’. She embarked on her memoir as ‘therapy’, never expecting to publish it. She hopes her writing can help people understand what it means to live in exile. ‘My book is a simple cry for myself and my people who died, suffered, lost their children, became disabled, were widowed and
MUNA ISMAIL ‘Every moment
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Photo credit: Laura Noble
is a moment to learn’
PLANTING
THE FUTURE Refugees have a lot to contribute, Dr Muna Ismail tells Aleksandra Shymina.
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I was so angry that I joined the UK’s Marxist party for a short while. I almost got arrested during a protest at the American embassy.’ She was lucky in her timing, as university education in England was still free. She studied chemistry and went on to do a doctorate, which took her on an internship to Seattle, USA, where she married and had a son. She returned to the UK in 2009, carrying the experience of a failed marriage. In 2011 she met Initiatives of Change, and came to a tipping point in her life: ‘At some point I had to face it – to either be a miserable, bitter single mum or change my attitude and make something out of my life.’ Although Muna was born and brought up in Mogadishu, her ancestral home is Somaliland, in the north west of Somalia. She is working here to reintroduce Yeheb, a leguminous food and fodder plant, which has become extinct on the Haud plateau in Somaliland, where it used to flourish. She believes it could
be a key to improving local conditions, by providing work and nutrition. The first trial plantings took place at the end of last year, and are doing well. ‘This is my way of saying we can do something in our own country and have a good life.’ She also hopes that the project will help to reengage the younger generation of the Somali diaspora. ‘My son is a multinational,’ she says. ‘He was born in the US and lives in the UK. I fear he is losing connection with his roots. He doesn’t speak Somali, the language of his ancestors.’ She hopes that one day her son will help with the project on the ground – maybe with British friends from other cultures, or other British Somalis. What drives Muna to do this work? ‘My quest for inner peace,’ she replies. ‘Isn’t that what we all are looking for? I need a peaceful world. When I am old sitting under a Galool tree in Somalia, looking out on fields of Yeheb, I want to be able to say – this was my life. It hasn’t been so bad after all.’
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Photo credit: Abdinasir Ahmed
Planting yeheb seeds in Somaliland
una Ismail has spent most of her life outside her home country, Somalia. She is passionate about what refugees can contribute both to their host countries and their countries of origin. Muna is the force behind Refugees as Rebuilders, a new training programme at the Initiatives of Change centre in London, which focuses on ethical governance, social cohesion and the environment. She describes it as ‘a culmination’ of over 20 years’ experience of being a refugee. ‘It is a promise to others that there will be a point when life feels good again.’ She and her family fled Somalia when the fighting and shelling reached their neighbourhood. A long and complicated journey brought them to the UK, where Muna had spent five years at school in the 1980s. ‘I received a new identity – refugee,’ she says. ‘I felt it all – being lost, out of place, not fitting in, poor, confused.
A NEW
EUROPE Jens Wilhelmsen talks to Francis Evans about his experiences of post-war Europe. rid of the Germans, we would work together as a nation to rebuild the country and secure peace. Freedom would be the beginning of an adventure.’ Instead, Jens describes how vested interests and political wrangling quickly eroded the feeling of national solidarity. Now at university, he felt listless and depressed. The spectre of the cold war loomed on the horizon and the atom bomb was a warning that the next war would be worse. ‘I was left feeling that our struggle had been in vain’, he recalls. Resolution came unexpectedly, through what he describes as a
‘spectacular’ offer from two of his uncles. They offered his fare and accommodation to a conference in Switzerland, in the alpine village of Caux. People from all over the world would be there. ‘After five years of isolation, this offer was too good to reject,’ says Jens. That decision was to change the course of his life. ‘The people I met there gave me the tools to come out of my disillusionment. I was struck by a simple point: if you want to have a better world, you have to start with yourself. I knew long before I came to Caux that there was a gap between my ideals and my way of living. Here
Jens Wilhelmsen (left) and Max Bladeck (2nd right) after addressing the Congress of the Japanese Socialist Party in Tokyo. Max was a miner living in Moers, northern Germany, one of the first towns to receive the cast of the play The Forgotten Factor. Jens stayed in his home during this campaign. The invitation to them to visit Japan in 1953-4 was prompted by the revolution in industrial relations that was known to have taken place in Germany, which intrigued the Japanese who were facing similar issues. 18 | Changemakers
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Photo credit: Eyewitness to the Impossible
A
sked about the parallels between Europe today and in the post-war years, Jens Wilhelmsen summarises them in a single word: disillusionment. It’s an unexpected reaction. Surely there was hope then for peace and a better future? ‘I was 18 when the war ended and just leaving school’, he explains. ‘I had volunteered for the resistance against the German occupation and of course, the days of liberation were marvellous, intoxicating. We could fly our flag again! ‘During the war, we had a clear purpose. I thought once we had got
Jens Wilhelmsen speaking in Caux, July 2016
‘If you want to have a better world, you have to start with yourself.’ One of these gaps was bitterness towards Germany, a resentment that he struggled to overcome. Then in 1948, German leaders who had been to Caux invited an international group to come and help give new hope to their people. Jens was one of those invited. ‘I think it was the most difficult decision I’ve ever made’, he recalls. ‘I did not want to go to Germany. I certainly did not want to leave Norway before I had finished my education. But I decided finally to accept. The result was that I lived in Germany from 1948 to 1953 and it’s no exaggeration to say that I became as fond of Germany as I am of my own nation.’ www.changemakersmagazine.org
Jens describes those years in his book Eyewitness to the Impossible. The group’s work focused on the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland and a hotbed of class struggle. They criss-crossed the region with a play on industrial relations, The Forgotten Factor, talking and debating with audience members after each performance. As hotels and guest houses were mostly in ruins, the group stayed with families in the towns and cities they visited. With one mining family Jens slept on the living room sofa, getting up at 3:30 each morning to spend time with his host before he left for work. The group contributed to a new spirit of trust between management and workers. In 1951, a new law on co-determination in heavy industry laid the foundation for the Wirtshaftswunder, Germany’s economic miracle of the 1950s. ‘I am deeply disappointed to witness the revival of nationalism in Europe today’, says Jens. ‘We have all seen Europe’s inability to cooperate to help refugees, or overcome inequalities among its own people. These are symptoms of a deeper illness: we have put individualism before community and economic
growth before the eco-system on which our future depends. That is why I talk of disillusionment.’ ‘Why am I harking back to events in the Ruhr, sixty years ago? Because the presence and common commitment of a group of Europeans helped the disillusioned Germans believe that a new Europe was possible and that there was a place for them. Today’s generation may have the common task of helping Europe through its current predicament. ‘We Europeans betrayed our values by starting two world wars in the last century and by the excesses of colonialism during the centuries before. We owe the world an apology. The best form of restitution would be to make Europe a living example of how people of different nationalities, religions and political beliefs can live together in peace.’
‘Today’s generation may have the common task of helping Europe through its current predicament.’ Changemakers | 19
Photo credit: CAUX-Initiatives of Change Foundation
I heard about standards of integrity: honesty, unselfishness, love and purity. Those standards helped me put a name to these gaps in my life and decide to do something about them.’
FINDING MY ROLE IN THE
IMMIGRATION STORY Jonty Herman reflects on visiting refugee camps in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I happened to be in Indonesia when the ‘refugee crisis’ took off in the press. The BBC World Service blared out of a tinny digital radio in the centre of the room - ‘more closed borders’. I looked up, crushed. My Indonesian friends looked back at me and smiled with a disruptive optimism. In the conversation that followed they repeatedly mentioned ‘the Moravians’. It struck me as a little unusual that they should be so informed about a group of 18th Century European refugees, but then I
began to join the dots. Upon arriving in Saxony, the immigrant Moravians bickered almost unto bloodshed. The local landowner, Count Zinzendorf, was forced to relocate to live in among them. Somehow he managed to mediate such a powerful move of reconciliation, that the community were inspired to take the Christian message of sacrificial love and reconciliation far and wide. They were a key influence on the British Victorian social reformers and helped to lay the
‘It was amazing to step into a place so rich, warm and diverse in life, so close to home.’ 20 | Changemakers
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Photo credit: Jonty Herman
T
hey say that a picture is worth a thousand words. In that case a film must be worth 25,000 words per second. And if the pen is mightier than the sword, as a film maker, I must be wielding one mighty weapon! Most of my film work is for international peace organisations, but as a story-teller, I didn’t like the narratives I was hearing about refugees in the media - based on fear and victimhood, stirring up political divisions.
‘...in every tent, concrete block shed or warehouse I was confronted by raw, honest humanity.’ Calais, France. The social currency for ‘Millennials’ in the UK is good looks and charm, and these guys had it in abundance! It was amazing to step into a place so open, warm and diverse so close to home. Yet my heart ached for the countries, from
Eritrea to Afghanistan, which had lost these beautiful, intelligent, joyful people; and for these people who had lost their homes. Lebanon, Germany, South Sudan – in every tent, concrete block shed or warehouse I was confronted by raw, honest humanity.
‘There was hope, strangely in the midst of it all. It was in the simple honesty of people - happy or hurting - being people.’ www.changemakersmagazine.org
Changemakers | 21
Photo credit: Jonty Herman
spiritual and moral foundations of many of today’s liberal democracies. ‘Perhaps there are modern stories of hope just like this out there today’ I thought to myself, and I headed to France, Lebanon, Germany and South Sudan to find out. My first stop was Europe’s biggest refugee camp in
‘How can I call these people “immigrants” any more?’ I asked, as my friend swung a beaming, little Afghan child around by the arms.’ and 20-plus nationalities, I noticed one curious thing. Whenever conversations turned to politics, some of that humanity seemed to get lost. People suddenly got offended, talked in stereotypes, became divisive. Whenever people referred to others by their political label, their words created division. ‘How can I call these people
“immigrants” anymore?’ I asked, as my friend swung a beaming, little Afghan child around by the arms. That image will stay with me for a long time. I wondered what would happen to our politics if we could all encounter the human being first, and the immigrant second. So these are the stories I now want to tell - hopeful, human ones.
‘I wonder what would happen to our politics if we could all encounter the human being first, and the immigrant second.’ 22 | Changemakers
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Photo credit: Jonty Herman
Jonty Herman in Indonesia
Whether living alongside 25 adolescent refugee boys, or attempting to work to some sort of schedule in South Sudan, my character was often tested and found wanting. But there was hope, strangely in the midst of it all. It was in the simple honesty of people - happy or hurting being people. Over eight months, five countries
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ISSUE 2 - DEC 2015
STORIES OF CHANGE
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HOME AGAIN WHAT NOW? POWER TO THE PEOPLE WHY I BLEW THE WHISTLE
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STORIES OF CHANGE
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