ISSUE 4 - DEC 2016 STORIES OF CHANGE £2.00 FIGHTERS ‘LET’S MEET’ FOR SAY LEBANESE PEACE MOTHERS LIFE HOPE FOR AFTER LANDMINE LUCY CASUALTIES ORDINARY MAGIC Contents See page 20 04 All change for healthy living 06 Hope for landmine casualties 09 Hum the change you want to see 10 Ordinary magic: the power of tea 13 Where camels are part of the answer 14 Life after Lucy 16 ‘Let’s meet’, say Lebanese mothers 18 Fighters for peace 19 Everyone welcome 20 Courage and resilience in Northern Uganda Initiatives of Change is a worldwide Changemakers Magazine Please contact us with your movement of people of diverse cultures 24 Greencoat Place, views: and backgrounds who are committed to the London SW1P 1RD Tel: 020 7798 6000 transformation of society through changes in @UKChangemakers human motives and behaviour, starting in their own lives. Editor: Davina Patel Sub-editor: Mary Lean facebook.com/ Designer: Laura Noble changemakersmagazine We work to inspire, equip and connect people to Photographers: Yee Liu Williams, Jonty Herman, address world needs in the areas of trust building, Laura Noble, Leonard Fäustle, Sophie Coxon, [email protected] ethical leadership and sustainable living. Natalia Medvedeva, A. Dombrovskij, John Bond, Muna Ismail, Kelly Burks. Cover: Leonard Fäustle In the UK, Initiatives of Change is a charity All rights reserved. The views expressed are not ISSN: 2059-5719 registered No. 226334 (England and Wales). necessarily those of the publishers. 2 | Changemakers www.changemakersmagazine.org From the Editor Welcome to Changemakers he year 2016 is drawing to its close. It will be remembered for Britain voting to leave the EU, the Telection of Donald Trump and the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. With everything going on in the world, it is often hard to find positive inspiration. This is why I love stories of people who have a passion for social change and who remind me that the power to transform lives lies within us. In this issue you will find stories of people with incredible courage, resilience and positivity. Take Merel Rumping (p6), for example, who found her passion in social entrepreneurship and is now transforming the lives of amputees in Colombia. Sergio Lopez Figueroa (p9) discovered that music improved his mental health issues and set up Humming in Harmony to help others. Marian Partington (p14) had the courage to forgive her sister’s murderers. What have all those featured in the magazine got in common? They started with themselves. For more stories of change, and to subscribe to receive updates, visit our website: Read online Free! www.changemakersmagazine.org Davina Patel, Editor [email protected] Our writers John Bond Muna Ismail Kenneth Noble Mary Lean Merel Rumping Samuel Mallett Aleksandra Shymina Kate Monkhouse Yee Liu Williams www.changemakersmagazine.org Changemakers | 3 4 | Changemakers www.changemakersmagazine.org Photo credit: Jonty Herman ALL CHANGE FOR HEALTHY LIVING The De Rosas’ home is a ‘bus-stop’ where people can make a new start. Aleksandra Shymina reports. ominic and Jo De Rosa share run the centre together, weathering used to belong to Peter Howard, a key a mission to help others to the challenges of being business figure in Moral Re-Armament (MRA), embrace a healthy lifestyle. partners as well as life partners. the precursor of Initiatives of Change. Jo has struggled with drug The centre offers yoga, retreats They were attracted by the hall which Daddiction and alcoholism: for Dom, and healthy food, and ‘Quantum Howard had built specifically for who says he was a social user, the Sobriety’, a programme developed MRA gatherings, which Jo now uses issue was food. Their journey towards by Jo to help people struggling with as her yoga studio, and by the fact personal freedom and ‘congruence’ various types of addictions. Born that the house was large enough has run parallel with the growth of out of her own experience and to accommodate small residential their wellbeing business, based in a their Buddhist faith, it combines groups. 16th century farmhouse in Suffolk. neuroscience, holistic therapies, When Dom started to research When they met, both Dom and nutrition, one-to-one work and the history of the house, he was struck Jo had given up drugs, but Jo was still ongoing follow-up support. by MRA’s emphasis on silent reflection drinking heavily. ‘She was teaching ‘We look on addiction as and inner change, and by the fact that yoga and meditation fulltime, and she something in the brain, rather than a the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous knew that doing that with a hangover disease,’ says Dom. ‘Alcohol, cocaine, were influenced by the ideas of was not congruent,’ says Dom. Various abusive relationships are the plaster MRA’s founder Dr Frank Buchman. attempts at sobriety had failed, but over what is wrong. You have to This synchronicity encouraged him when Jo finally told Dom, ‘That’s it, I’ve remove the plaster and find the root to make contact with Initiatives of had enough,’ he knew she meant it. cause. People abuse substances Change, and the De Rosas recently Eight months ago, Dom followed her because it is easier to do that than hosted the ‘descendants of MRA’ at example. find their truth.’ They do not run Hill Farm for a reflective meeting. His passion is ‘clean eating’: meals medical detoxes, but try to catch ‘Our aim,’ says Dom, ‘is to give at their Inner Guidance Retreat Centre people before they are physically people the opportunity to help are predominantly vegan, and free of dependent or once they have themselves.’ They see their centre as wheat, dairy, sugar and preservatives. withdrawn and are looking for help in a ‘bus stop’: a place where people can ‘I lost three and a half stone, not by sustaining their sobriety. come to change the direction they are dieting but by eating differently,’ he Four years ago, just after Jo travelling in. Just as they have done says. He writes books on how healthy stopped drinking for good, they themselves. food can be fun and easy, and they moved into Hill Farm in Suffolk, which www.changemakersmagazine.org Changemakers | 5 6 | Changemakers www.changemakersmagazine.org Photo credit: Leonard Fäustle HOPE FOR LANDMINE CASUALTIES Merel Rumping from ProPortion has developed a social enterprise, which could transform life for amputees in Colombia and beyond. She tells her story. ive years ago I visited a tiny to prosthetic care for low-income from falling in love with Colombia, its mountain village in Switzerland amputees? And that our team would warm and welcoming people, the sun, called Caux. The international win several Dutch prizes, receive a and the liveliness and the optimism conference centre of Initiatives million dollar donation from Google with which all problems were met. Fof Change (IofC) is beautifully located and brainstorm with Bill Gates? Several years later I returned to overlooking the bright blue Lake of Colombia to work at a micro-credit Geneva. I participated in a conference ‘The harsh world of the bank. There I discovered the potential on Trust and Integrity in the Global of social enterprise. I was heading for Economy, which aimed at finding ways slums didn’t prevent me a diplomatic career, studying political of creating a just and sustainable science in France and working at the economy, through professional and from falling in love with Dutch embassy in Morocco. It became personal activity. Colombia.’ clear to me that I believed in the I came with a goal in mind: power of social enterprise, and that to explore how I could contribute As a student in my twenties (I this was where I wanted to put my to a more just world through my am now 32), I went to Colombia to energies. professional activities. My goal was work in the slums with street kids and Social entrepreneurs find inno- clear, but the way forward was still former child soldiers. We developed vative solutions for social problems. unknown. Who would have thought a theatre play together. Often the Social Enterprise NL, who promote the that five years later I would be back street kids were on drugs, slept on the concept in the Netherlands, put it like at Caux as a speaker? And that I streets and prostituted themselves, this: ’Like any other enterprise, a social would have started LegBank, a social sometimes as young as 11. The harsh enterprise delivers a product or a ser- enterprise which increases access world of the slums didn’t prevent me vice and has a viable business model. Merel Rumping with a landmine victim in Colombia who has been helped by LegBank www.changemakersmagazine.org Changemakers | 7 Photo credit: Leonard Fäustle Clinicians in Colombia using a Majicast device However making money is not the tube are mainly mass-produced, main aim, it is a way of achieving your but the socket is normally made by mission. The aim of a social enterprise hand, because it has to fit the user’s is to create added social value, also residual limb precisely. This is time called impact.’ and cost intensive, and requires I started to work for ProPortion, a lot of experience and expertise. a creative organisation in Amsterdam Majicast makes it possible to produce that initiates social enterprises in high quality prosthetic sockets in a emerging economies. This gave me relatively easy way without using your the chance to initiate LegBank, to hands. This is important, because the offer affordable, quality prostheses world is short of prosthetic makers to low-income amputees, especially and clinicians. in emerging economies. We started Thanks to investors, funds and in Colombia, which has the second a strong development team we highest number of landmine victims in were able to design Majicast, and the world.