Stories
that
matter.

Cut off from the outside world, the inhabitants of this village with no name, located deep in the forest of Madagascar, have learned to become almost entirely self-sufficient. With no running water or electricity, everything in the village had to be done by hand. Are there lessons we can learn from their experiences?

As war and conflict continue to ravage the Middle East, record numbers of refugees have been forced to flee their homes in search of safety. They have become the faceless, forgotten people whose individual stories have been lost along the way.

All over the world, communities are suffering the everyday realities of climate change. Yet, their stories are often drowned out by the noise of global discussions that seldom hear from those most affected.

The Nazis murdered an estimated 1.1 million people in Auschwitz, most within the first few hours of arrival. What intense confusion, fear, and unimaginable brutality must they have experienced on their way to the gas chambers?

Despite the pain of leaving her children behind in Madagascar, Janine was full of hope for the future when she travelled overseas to begin a new career in the restaurant industry. Instead, she discovered she had been trafficked into a brutal world of prostitution and sexual violence.

Exhausted from days of sleep and oxygen deprivation, I stood staring up at the summit of Kilimanjaro and wondered, for the first time, whether this would finally be a challenge too far.

Look at this photograph; what do you see? On the surface, it is a story of everyday poverty in the 21st century but, as I have learned, there is always more to every story if we are prepared to look deeper into the narrative.