Episode Transcript
[00:00:17] Speaker A: So, Catherine, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so, so much for joining us. We're super excited to have this conversation. Your background is really exciting, and we're so excited for the listeners to hear your story. So thank you.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: First of all, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here as well.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Thank you.
Okay, well, I was thinking we just jump straight into it, so let's maybe start. Just take us back to the beginning. What first.
What first stirred your heart towards refugee education and displaced young people?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Well, yeah. How far back to go? I went. I won't get too far back, don't worry.
I think, actually, probably I first started thinking about the situation that refugee children and young people find themselves in just after I finished university.
I grew up in Basingstoke, so it's not, you know, there wasn't much exposure to new refugee crises at that time, but through the work of both of my parents, I grew up knowing from a very early age and through friends who lived and worked in other countries, as having a certain amount of exposure to the fact that there was, you know, in fact, a world beyond Basingstoke and that it was a complicated world.
And so I think I grew up from a really early age not taking for granted the fact that I lived in a country that was peaceful and I got to go to school every day, and that that wasn't something that everyone automatically had, like, simply due to the lottery of where they were born.
But whilst I was studying at university, I studied languages, and I did a placement year abroad working as a teaching assistant in a school.
And I started at that time to really see and think through some of the catalytic impact that education can have in people's lives. And actually, like, when you have access to education, it gives you this whole toolbox that you can draw on in all kinds of contexts. And so I thought, actually, I really like to be involved in education in some way and as a. As a vehicle for that being almost like a doorway and a pathway to a future that could be more hopeful.
And it then happened that in my first teaching job, I had lots of refugee children in my classes, and so started to see just how much value they put on education.
So many other things happened on that journey, but I think one of the key things was that the kids that I was working with, they would come early before class and stay late after class, and they would want to talk about, not just, like, the content of the lesson, but they wanted to talk about the stuff that was going on outside of the education.
Small education world that was making it difficult for them to focus, to plan to move forward. So there's trauma, there's practicalities, there's going through the immigration system, all of the things that you would expect.
And I then started to encounter increasing numbers of refugee children who were out of school.
So when myself and my husband moved to London, I was working for an international NGO in education and emergencies and education and conflict settings. That involved quite a lot of travel, but also involved doing the same walk to the Tube station to go to the London office and walking through this group of young people who would be sitting on a wall on our road.
And eventually, I think, as the former youth worker in me, couldn't walk through the same group of young people on a daily basis without at some point talking to them, realized that they were refugee children who had arrived in the UK and were still waiting for school places some of them had been waiting almost a year.
And so at that point I started to see, not only is education highly valued by young refugees, not only can education have a catalytic impact in people's lives, but people don't get it. In my community, on my doorstep, in my part of London, there are kids that are out of school who want to be in school.
And so that really was the start of what then became RE uk, was a small church volunteer project thinking, oh, maybe we could do a little bit of educational mentoring for these young people.
And that then started to grow into what is now our uk.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Wow, that was incredible. And as you were. As you were speaking, actually, I was just thinking about it, like, for me personally, education is just like a big part of my family's world. Like, we. It's just a big part. And it is something that you kind of. You can take for granted. Like, the other people don't have the same opportunity. And I think I probably have been guilty of that as well, that, you
[00:05:50] Speaker B: know, I think they all have.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: Yeah, not everyone has the opportunity, but it makes such a huge difference. And not to go too far off topic, but we just. We're reviewing a book this season as well, and I think some of those kind of topics have kind of filtered through in terms of, like, the exposure to, like, these kind of things, like education that some people just don't have, actually, and how that really can affect the trajectory of someone's life. So amazing work to fill that space.
I think that that really, really resonated with me. As you were speaking, do you feel like your understanding of God's heart for people's needs has matured or changed since you started doing the work.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Yeah, and it has been a little, a little while now. So that, that, that story that I just told of walking through those young people on the way to work was back in, it must have been 29 or 2009, 2010.
So it is, it's been, it's been 15 years since those early days. But I think one thing, I mean actually, maybe what comes to mind actually is more something that stayed consistent rather than something that's changed. But I, I think perhaps it's something that I have become increasingly more aware of and increasingly put value on. But it's that, it's the, it's the idea of hope and just the value of hope.
It's one of our, and has become one of our foundational organizational values.
But I think for me, I have seen increasingly over the years that when we invest in education that, that is almost like an encapsulation of being able to communicate something about hope because education is in and of itself forward looking.
When we choose to invest in that with young people, it's almost like we're sending that really clear message that there is a future and that we believe that to the point that we're willing to invest in that future when maybe not everyone else is willing to do that.
So I think that that foundation of hope has become really, really important.
I sometimes say that if I had a pound for every time that a young person talks about, you know, when I'm at school or when I'm at college, I feel hopeful.
I can think about the future. I can start to believe that maybe life one day will look different to how it looks now that, you know, we'd never have to do any fundraising for our UK again.
But for me, you know, I know we talk about, you know, hope is talked about a lot, isn't it? But for me, that it like for fundamentally relates back to my faith as well.
And if anything I would say I hold to that as a, you know, even, even more dearly and more tightly than I, than I even did 15 years ago.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: I've got like two opposing questions here because I want to ask a little bit more about your background and what's led you here. But then you've said something about hope and how you hold on to that. And so I've got a question looking forward now. So we'll do this reverse. So I'll ask the forward looking question which is how do you practically especially kind of in this day and age with the news, with, you know, so much going on in the world.
You know, you work in the third sector, there's cuts, you know, financial issues and lack. And then there's political things happening as well. How do you stay hopeful? What does that look like for you practically to hold and to grip onto hope?
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that is a huge question and I think probably the reality is that in practice it looks different in all kinds of seasons, but then there is something underpinning that, that I think never changes. So in practice I think holding onto hope it can look like it can be as basic as taking some time out to go for a walk and remember who God is and what he has said.
It can be as practical as choosing to celebrate the small things in the midst of an overarching climate. That is really, really difficult.
But I think for me there's a really important consistent thing underneath that, which is that hope is very, very different to optimism.
And we, we talk about that quite a lot@RE UK because just being optimistic for the young people, for and with the young people that we work with isn't enough. Because actually there are often, you know, there's not always like the happy ending. It's not, it's not always. Young people don't always get the leave to remain in the UK that they, that they, you know, so desperately want or they don't get the university place that you know, academically they'd be fully able of fulfilling.
So that there's not always like the optimistic outcome doesn't always happen, but we have a hope in something that is more, more deeply rooted than getting what we want. And so holding onto that. And for me that's about ultimately the reason that I do the work that I do is because I believe in a, a God who makes all things new and who restores and who will and is redeeming against all of the odds the broken, messy, painful things that we are all surrounded by on the micro levels of our own lives to the macro level of global conflicts. And I think coming back to that from a theological perspective is what actually keeps me going and grounded on a day to day basis in the midst of a lot of situations where actually optimism, optimism and positive thinking just isn't, it just isn't enough. It's woefully lacking.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:12:16] Speaker C: Thank you for that. And then I know pre recording this we had a conversation about your kind of journey and you had shared that because I'd gone to India with my son and you talked about the trip that you took with your parents and would you say that that was the seed that started all of this? Or do you feel that actually the Lord has been revealing his calling for you and in each of the different seasons? Because you mentioned that you were a youth worker, then you were a teacher and now you're a CEO. So how have you navigated or. Yeah, the different seasons and the different callings that you've had.
Has it always been very clear to you what the Lord has said he wants of you, Catherine, or has he just taken you as you've taken one step after another?
Why start charity, just all of this?
[00:13:17] Speaker B: There's a lot of, there's a lot of questions in there. You have a very good question. Memory to remember that. Me mentioning that trip. Yeah, you're right.
My mum and dad did. Through their sort of, I guess work and personal and church connections. They ended up doing a visit to some family friends who were working with an aid organization in Nepal when I was 7 and my brother was 5. And we weren't supposed to go with them, but they decided to take us with them because they, they wanted, they believed it would be a formative experience and they wanted us to grow up understanding from an early age.
I guess like I sort of alluded to earlier that there is a world outside of Basingstoke and it really, it really, it really did. And I can, it was obviously before the days of iPhones and being able to take a million pictures and I remember that I had my first ever camera for that trip and that I could take 24 photo and I've actually still got those photos and a lot of them are like someone's hand completely, a face completely obscured. It's like very low quality 7 year old photos when you can't see what you're taking. But I remember my mum often saying, oh, take a picture in your mind of like even just like take a picture in your mind of this view. Take a picture in your mind of this like school that you're getting to visit. Take a picture in your mind of this, of that.
And so I, and I did. And I think those, those memories then did become quite a core part, albeit it was, you know, it's a tiny experience in the, in the big scheme of things. But. So yeah, I do think that that shaped my thinking. I, I am.
But in terms of your broader question, which I guess is like about vocation and cooling and how, how we sort of understand that, isn't it that I, I think it's so different for, for all of us. But I, I am probably a firm believer In God.
God showing us things one step at a time.
And we'd love to see from A to Z. But so often I think my experience is that God is often more like, okay, just take this step now. Okay, maybe one more. Okay, now you've done this. Maybe try this.
And I found that immensely frustrating in my sort of late teenage and early 20s years where I had, like, a lot of probably, like, you know, teenage angst about, you know, like, what am I supposed to be doing? And, like, I don't think it's. I. Yeah, I had a lot of questions about how. What I. What I ultimately wanted to be doing. I'd always, Always wanted to work in, like, sort of social justice in some way, shape or form.
And I found myself a youth worker for relatively, like, relatively privileged kids in the Oxfordshire, like, city and countryside, which I actually love, because each of those teenagers, I. I mean, they're an amazing group of. An amazing group of kids that I was a privilege to get to know and spend time with. But I was like, lord, this isn't. This isn't what I thought I was gonna be doing with my life. And, yeah, I. I really. I think maybe it's just a constant. I think you might have asked about, how did you feel God preparing you and leading you through different seasons or something. That's what you said.
I think we're just all constantly in that, right?
I think God's always using our experiences and our giftings and our interests and the things that he has put on our hearts. He's always using them for something.
And so I. I look back and I'm like, wow. Actually, I got. I got my first role working with refugee young people in part because I had youth work experience, albeit with a completely different group of young people.
So I can look back and say, like, oh, yeah, God definitely did use that.
The teaching experience that I had is, you know, always often comes in. Often comes in useful even in just understanding education.
So I look back and see, oh, yeah, there are all these different seasons, and I can see how things have come from them. But I also.
I often. I struggle with the concept that God is preparing us for something that we then arrive at. And then it's like, great. This is what I was prepared for, and now I'm doing it. I really, like. I think I see it much more as, like, God is.
We're working with God for our whole lives through multiple different seasons. And he takes.
He takes stuff from all of our experiences and all of our seasons. And so I'm like, Right. Yeah. I wonder. I wonder how what he'll take from what I'm doing now for what I might be doing when I'm 70 years old.
Who knows what it will look like?
It's a journey, and I think it is just trying to work out one step at a time.
[00:18:20] Speaker C: There's your voice of hope again.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: I actually wanted to jump in really quickly there because as you started chatting through, essentially alluding to some challenges along the way, I wanted to touch on that a little bit and just wanted to explore, if you don't mind sharing what have been some of the toughest moments or most challenging seasons, situations in your journey to date.
And then how do you find God's strength in those moments?
[00:18:54] Speaker B: There is, like, no end of challenging moments to choose from.
I guess there's. There's a. There's a couple from recent years that have that come to mind.
One of the things with running a charity is that, like, you. You end up employing people, and then, you know, ideally you'd like to keep employing those people, which means you need to still be able to cover all the running costs of the organization and get funding.
So we're now a team of about 30, 35 employees, about 200 volunteers working across the country, and we work with about 2,000 refugee children each year.
And in the midst of all of that, we have a certain amount of money that we need to raise every year to keep doing that. And a few years ago, we had a situation where we were facing a cliff edge in terms of the finances for the organization.
And I discovered in one day that we.
We had three months of cash flow left, which was in a whole variety of particular circumstances that led to that, which, you know, it's really. It's really understandable how it happened, but it was a really critical moment of me.
I can remember coming home that day and thinking, three months isn't enough time. Like, we're too big a ship to, like, change course in three months. You can't just.
The size of organization that we are now, you can't just, like, run an appeal and, like, carry you through.
And so I came home and I remember thinking, we're going to need to reduce our size by half, like, at least.
And it felt utterly impossible that we would come out of that situation.
And I. I think the thing that.
In that. In that moment, the thing that I really held onto was like, ultimately, I believe that this is. This is an organization that God has, you know, I hold it lightly.
So it was like, okay, Lord, I. I believe in Your provision.
I also know that organizations have to fold sometimes and have to close or have to make large scale redundancies in order to continue their work in another shape or size.
And I don't, so I don't know what you're doing, but I know that you can provide.
I also know that I need to hold this lightly and we need to make some really wise decisions in a really short time frame.
And it was incredibly difficult. I think I didn't sleep at all for like three days just like trying to work out what we should do.
And somehow, somehow we completely did come through that situation. There was some incredible, incredible provision and situations that, you know, shouldn't have turned out how they did.
And so I have, I, I've had some incredibly difficult situations over the years where we've had like utterly, no, actually no money available for what we think God has given us to do.
And God has provided in incredible ways. And yet that's been held in that tension of I, you know, Christian organizations fold all the time. There's not, I don't, I don't, I have no sense of, kind of entitlement, of like, you know, God will, God will always meet every single funding need that we have because the reality is that that doesn't, that doesn't always happen.
But there's also a truth alongside that I believe, you know, God will provide what we need to do, what he wants us to do for as long as he wants us to do it. And I will have partial sight of what that is. And I say needing to adopt a sort of posture of surrender and trust in the midst of that and being as wise as possible with difficulty, you know, difficult decisions.
But that was, that's one, one thing. Another really tough situation would be that we're based in a former bank building in London. It, it's a beautiful, big like, heritage building, utterly gorgeous place to have our work operate from.
It was derelict for about five years and then through a whole, you know, series of miracles, which is a whole other podcast in itself, we found ourselves in a position to put down a deposit buying this building.
And we were told through all of the, you know, surveys and, you know, professional opinions of people who actually do know about renovations and property, not me, that it would take nine months to refurbish and cost, and cost about £500,000.
And we had part of that money already from a local authority grant, but we completed on the purchase two weeks before the first lockdown in Covid in 2020, with no idea, no idea what was about to, you know, unravel across the country.
It actually took four years to refurbish and cost 2.7 million pounds, and we didn't have that money.
And again, it. That was an incredibly challenging, prolonged situation as a. As opposed to that sort of. That. That acute crisis that, you know, was very dramatic, but was resolved relatively quickly.
This felt like a.
It felt like an exercise in just day after day, problem after problem after problem after problem, but like, of just learning a dependence on God over. Over a prolonged period.
I mean, is.
[00:25:09] Speaker C: Is that how you view this journey? Because as Toyon was saying that we know there's a book that we've been kind of spotlighting on during this podcast, which is, you know, Jackie Pullinger's book, Chasing a Dragon. And when she goes over to Asia and it's. And you're reading throughout the pages, like, the. Day by day trusting God for, you know, something as small as rice to, you know, the funds that would come from abroad to pay her rent and stuff. So I think my question is, I'm feeling anxious listening to you because I'm a very anxious person thinking, oh, my gosh, if I was living on the edge every single day of how is everything going to happen? I mean, how. How do you manage that as a CEO, as a leader, as someone, you know, committed to what the Lord has called you to in this season, however long that season is.
How do you show steward but surrender? How do you have vision but hold it lightly? How do you trust?
But there are people who are looking to you.
Yeah. How does that work?
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that is such a good question. And because I. I think sometimes you can have vision and be holding things lightly, and it can lead you to being really irresponsible and just, you know, just being like, yes, we just want to do this because, you know, God will provide. And then before you know it, you've actually.
There's been unintended negative consequences that have been really damaging to a load of people. And I think we need to. We do need to take that really seriously. And so I think for us, things like putting in place, like proper governance structures from the outset has been really important. There are people on our board who will ask, you know, really difficult questions. They will, you know, they want to see all of the data. We go through finances with, you know, fine tooth comb. I mean, like, you both work in that sector. You kind of, you. You get it. But, you know, like, we do that stuff properly and we do work. We do work really hard on fundraising, so. And I I know a lot of my role is writing applications.
You know, it's writing proposals, it's responding to calls for this and that, and we prioritize that and we do it to the absolute best of our ability and we work really hard.
At the same time, I think there's a. For me, and particularly with the. The building project, that was.
Felt like an entire sort of faith adventure.
There was. It's like, you do that and it takes you this far and then there's. You feel like you feel like you're in that zone of like, I'm stewarding the gifts that God has given me. I. I can write, I can have these, like, conversations with people, et cetera, et cetera.
Make sure we've put good people on the board. Brilliant. We've got really wonderful, wonderful, like, people on our staff team.
[00:28:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: But then there's always that bit that you're like, oh, Lord, without. Without you. This stuff. This stuff has happened that was completely beyond my control and I can take no credit for at all. Like.
So a practical example with the building because.
Ended up being a much more complex and expensive and Covid project than we had knew it would be.
We regularly got to the point when we were like, right, we've. We've got nothing left.
And I remember one day money. One day money came because somebody looked around the building who had no interest in young refugees and no interest in education, but really cared about property, like derelict properties being brought back into community use.
And they looked around the building and I had no idea that they were interested in financial support. And yet later, later that week, I had a call saying that they wanted to give us. Out of nowhere, they wanted to give us £300,000 so that we could include the attic in the refurbishment of the building, which we weren't going to be able to do.
So I think I've cried instantly.
But, you know, we'd made what seemed like a wise sort of stewardship decision of we were not. We will not be able to redevelop the attic. We'll just have to make it weatherproof because we don't have the resources to. We can't. We're not going to overstretch.
And then that happened on another occasion, we had come up against another cliff edge of we don't have enough for this next problem that's emerged. And this was also during COVID Somebody was walking their dog in the first lockdown on the other side of London and they bumped into somebody else walking their dog and had a conversation with them. And said, the first person said, you don't happen to know anyone doing anything interesting in education, do you? Preferably a capital project, because I've been retained by a charity who is winding down and needs to distribute their assets and they'd like it to go into something that will have a lasting legacy in education for young people who've experienced disadvantage of some kind.
The other person happened to be someone who had previously supported our work and so knew about us and knew about the capital project that we were doing and said, oh, actually, yes, I do. And, you know, the result of that was that we got a significant grant from this charity that was winding down for the capital project that we had no idea was going to come from. And it came from two people walking their dogs on the other side of London in lockdown.
Just, you can't, you can't, you know, you can't manufacture that type of stuff. And so I think really, in terms of your question, I guess my answer is like, take really seriously everything that is within your gift to do so and make sure you do that to the utter best of your ability and make the wisest decisions that you can with the information that you have. Yeah, one thing I think that is really important on this balance and then be open and surrendered to responsibility and wisdom and surrender in terms of trying to make the best decisions that you can with the information you have available. At the time, had our board known that a lockdown from COVID was two weeks around the corner and that what we'd been told was a 500,000 pound refurb project over nine months, when we had like two thirds of that in grant funding already, had they known that it was going to be four years, it would take a year even to get planning permission because of COVID and that it was going to cost 2.7 million pounds, would they have signed off on that purchase? Like, absolutely not.
They wouldn't have. They would have just said, this is irresponsible and they wouldn't have done it. So I also look back and think, like, well, you know, God knows that we are trying to steward an organization and do it as responsibly as we possibly can. And I think I. Some people have said to me, gosh, if only you'd known. And you know, and I'm like, no, if we'd known, we wouldn't have done it. I think God gave us the information that we could actually cope with at the time. Like, we could cope with the idea of, you know, we've got two thumbs at Two thirds of the funding, we think we can raise the rest.
There's a gap, but it doesn't feel completely crazy. It's going to take nine months like that. That was like tolerable for us had we known what it was actually going to be. So I, I just think, well, oh fine, God.
You respond, you then respond to what the reality is. And the reality was crazily different to what we'd expected. And that's when we were like, okay, Lord, we're in this and we think that you're in it with us. We're surrendering to you. You've got, you know, we're in this situation and we need you to get through it.
[00:33:02] Speaker C: Amazing. I guess it's that when, you know, when they say that he meets you like where you're at and what you've got in your hand, but then he is so much bigger when he says that his ways and his plans are far bigger, wider, greater than anything that we could kind of hope or imagine for. So, and I've got one like burning question that I'd like to ask just because of how close your work is to kind of my personal history and my journey.
And you know, I did say to you that I see, I completely agree with the value of what you're doing because I am my family. We are exactly this client group and just one generation and everything is completely different. And what happen because of education and, you know, being Sri Lankans, it's a big part of who we are. You know, families are very much like, go and get an education, they'll do all the hard work, just do well and that will set you up for life. And I look at the life that my children are living and it is very different to, you know, what my parents went through.
And so this is really, really precious to me what you're saying and what you're doing.
But my question kind of, yeah, my last few questions and then te can help us wrap this all up as well, is what would you say to your younger self now? So to the seven year old Catherine who is in Nepal, to the Catherine that was in Oxford, you know, working with the youth there, to the Catherine that moved down to London and saw the group of youth hanging out on the street, what would you say to your younger self now? Would you do anything differently? Would you.
Yeah, what would you say?
[00:34:52] Speaker B: Yeah, probably to my teenage and early 20s self, I would say chill out a little bit.
You don't need to be so intense about everything.
I, I think just that it's it's okay to get it wrong and mess it up and not really know and have to feel your way a little bit. And instead of trying to work out what the right answer is or what am I supposed to be doing, just to experience a little bit more freedom and like, who is God and what is God already doing and how could I join in with him in that, in whatever season of life I'm in and whatever that looks like at this time.
And no, you will mess it up.
You won't get everything right. You'll do things that you wish you'd handled differently and it's okay.
Yeah, absolutely.
And also, this isn't necessarily something that is like, to do differently, but I think is maybe not what I was being like, taught necessarily through some of those experiences would be just how you treat people in the middle of what you're doing is just as important as what you do. Like, you can build the best, most amazing social justice organization and be a bit of a rubbish boss and not care for people and, you know, almost like actually, actually see it sometimes even a little bit more in social justice work because it's almost like people can, like, you know, we can have a tendency to get a little bit lost in what it is that we're actually doing and forget that kindness on a day in, day out basis just. Yeah, just as much. And I think that doesn't get enough. We spend too much time talking about what people are, what people are doing. And like, you know, we forget sometimes just being kind to people.
Like, I think about, I think about this one lady who's influenced me more than anybody else, probably in my spiritual journey, as it happens, she has done some incredible, incredible things. But what most struck me about her when I got to know her was that I was like, wow, I feel safe and valued and like you actually interested in me as a person. And that, like, was like that. I want, I want to be like that more than I want to be like, oh, you did like, you did stuff that people think is interesting. And I think in terms of how we, how we like, talk to teenagers and how we talk to young people in their early twenties about their lives and what they want to do, we can measure too much on. Like, what are you going to, especially from a faith perspective, what are you going to do for God? Or how are you going to use your giftings? What are you going to. Rather than just like, let's like, look at Jesus and how he treated people and how he was kind and invited people into like, beautiful restorative relationship with him.
I would like to grow up into my like, you know, further, further decades ahead of me. And that would be my hope would be like, become more like that, Become more like that lady who's influenced me who's now in her 70s. I'm like, if I can, if I, if, if people could ever possibly feel around me when I'm like that age, how I feel around her, I would feel like that would be life, well lived way more than any stuff.
So I would want my 7 year old self and my teenage self to be like, no, how much that matters because I think that would also help me just to chill out.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: I wanted to ask as well that if there was anyone listening who's just been deeply moved by everything we've been discussing, this area, this space and everything that you do in this education and refugee space, what advice would you give them of how to just get involved if they're feeling that stirring towards doing something and supporting the initiatives that you do? Like, where would they begin?
[00:39:18] Speaker B: Yeah, okay, that's. There's a few things, some of which are, and more conceptual and others are really practical. But conceptually I would just want to say, like, brilliant.
That is needed more than ever right now. We're living in an increasingly divided and polarized society where, you know, people's views are becoming sort of a little bit more radicalized. And also the algorithm just supports that, doesn't it? So it's easy just to get fed more and more and more and you get dragged down this sort of rabbit hole of more and more extreme views depending on what you've clicked on. So I, I would say like, we need more than ever people who are in this space who can be bridge builders. So I say if you feel moved in this area, then talk about it. Like talk to it, talk to your friends, tell them that you think it matters and tell them why.
And don't, like, don't just sit there and not say anything when there might be sort of scapegoating that's going on for like, you know, all of society's problems onto particular groups. So speak up. That would be one thing.
Be a bridge builder.
Talk to people who've got different opinions to you have friends from different sides of the political spectrum that you do whatever you can to bring people together and help us still be able to have conversations in which people have got different views and like, that's okay, but we can still talk about stuff and we can still take a compassionate approach. I think that is so critical at this time. But then practically if people are wanting to sort of get involved in some way, there are kind of specific things they could do that are directly with us. So we run, we run volunteer educational mentoring programs where people can be matched with a young person who's got a specific educational goal that they're trying to achieve. And once they weekly support with that, that's. If you're living in London, Oxford or Birmingham, then that's, that's an option. It should be really clear that we have a Reuk, has a Christian ethos. You don't have to be a Christian to work for REU uk. You don't have to be a Christian to volunteer for RE uk.
So anyone, anyone is welcome to come and support a young person in their, in their education.
I think prayer obviously is like really, really critical. But pray for refugee children and young people in our country who, you know, it's really difficult at the moment. Like there's a lot of, a lot of hostility and that has a very real impact on people's mental health and well being and physical safety as well.
So pray and I mean organizations are always needing finances to continue. So if you, if you have resources and you want to give them, then, then, then do so and know that, that, that is absolutely critical to stuff like this being able to continue.
I think the final thing that I would say is just start small.
I think there I, I have had a few conversations with people who, they, they are like, really, they're probably a little bit like I was as a teenager. Like, you know, like really you've got like so many ideas and like vision and like you're just like itching to do something. But I've had some conversations with people lately who've been almost like so overwhelmed by the scale of the injustice in the world currently and they can see really large scale solutions to some of these things. That's brilliant, but it's almost paralyzing because there's no obvious way to get from my life as a university student in this big city to some of the change that they want to see. And I've had conversations sometimes where years have gone by and you go back and have the same conversation with the same person. And so I would say start small, have a big vision and big ideas and the change that you want to see in the world. But look at your own community. Where can you make a friend with someone who might need a friend? What's already going on that you could support?
How can you learn humbly about the issues that you are Interested in or think we should have a different political response to or a different sociological response to whatever. Learn about it from people who live it on a day to day basis.
[00:43:46] Speaker C: Wow.
Oh, gosh, Catherine, we're out of time just because of diaries and schedules and everything. But gosh, I'm gonna come over because you said the kettle's always on. Because I want you to.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: I would just genuinely love it. I would love to just have a coffee with you too.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:05] Speaker C: I mean, I just want to know more about this. In the middle, we're gonna have to get you back on to give us tips about how to be a CEO, how to be a leader, how to scale up an organization, how to trust God and everything. Like, there's just so much, like, wealth of knowledge. And honestly, like, I'm in awe of your journey and it's such a privilege, honestly. Thank you so much for saying yes to us and sharing.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: Thanks for being interested. So, yeah, it's been so refreshing to talk to you guys. Really.
[00:44:39] Speaker C: Thank you. T. Any final words before we say our goodbyes?
[00:44:42] Speaker A: Yeah, no, just a massive, massive thank you. I say, Ms. B, I have been utterly inspired by everything we've discussed. I feel like my mind has been, like, blown multiple times and I'm just so encouraged. And I think it was really great that we had an opportunity just to chat through this and kind of shed, like, put a spotlight onto this space as well, because it's a bit different to some of the other, I guess, social impact spaces that we've looked at so far. So I'm glad that we got to chat through everything you do, learn from your experience. Experience. You have such wise words of wisdom as well.
So honestly, so thankful to have you on. Thank you for joining us. And I know that everyone listening will also just be in awe and just really inspired to, like, take the next steps and get involved where we can get involved. And that's the main, I guess, point of these conversations is like, helping everyone just to figure out, like, where are you feeling led, where are you. You feeling stirred and how can you actually get started to do something in this space? And I know that, yeah, this conversation has definitely inspired me in that way. So, yeah. Thank you so much.
[00:45:53] Speaker B: Wow. Thank you for being so warm and encouraging and I feel encouraged and built up just from talking to you. So thank you.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Thank you for everyone who's joined us and listened in. Please tune in for the next episode of Working Out. God, thank you so much.
[00:46:10] Speaker C: Bye.
