In another video from the Foreign Office to commemorate the 2012 Olympics in London, Camila Batmanghelidjh tells us her incredible story as an immigrant in Britain.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say what the following refer to:
14,000
100
400
40
6,000
14,000
12
9
6
Saatchi Gallery
eccentrics
You can self-correct the activity by reading the transcript here.
My name is Camila Batmanghelidjh. I'm a psychotherapist and the founder of Kids Company, a charity supporting 14,000 vulnerable children, and this is See Britain through my eyes.
When we first started, we were a handful of people in some railway arches. It was 100 adolescent boys from different gangs and I used to just stand here, and kinda take a deep breath, and say, "Welcome, please don't spit." And they used to get their knives out, rip the furniture, set the cushions alight, stick their chewing gums in places.
But as time went on, I got to know them and they started coming and talking to me, and it's just in this little railway arch, I heard 400 of the most horrific stories of what had happened to these children. So, we quietly, gently, and eccentrically grew to a big organization.
Now, we've got a five story building as our head office. We're on 40 different sites, 6,000 volunteers, 14,000 children who are being helped, a budget of 12 million and this is all thanks to the British public because every brick of Kids Company was built on the compassion of the British public.
What we do at Kids Company is that we function like a substitute parent in the lives of these children. Some of the children are so disturbed and traumatized that we need to untangle the trauma before they can go on to flourish.
When I was nine years old in Iran, I told my parents that I wanted to start an orphanage, but then the revolution happened in Iran, and I ended up in England. I had to get political asylum. Even though I had significant damage to my brain because of being born very premature, I walked out of Warwick with a first class degree, which then opened all the other doors. So now, I have six secretaries and I don't care if I can't spell.
At the exhibition we have at the Saatchi Gallery, each child did their bedroom in a shoebox. This is a young girl and she's showing her father's fist. If you look here, there's a ring that says "Dad". But actually, what she was faced with when she saw that ring is him punching her. So, you can see her sitting there with her cat and she was always terrified of his violence. And we had to put her in a hotel whilst we found her somewhere to live and completely stabilized her.
Here, you have evidence of child abuse and neglect being exhibited in one of the most important galleries of the world, the Saatchi Gallery.
It's an amazing testament of the commitment of people high up in British society to the welfare of children. The British are a complex race, full of contradiction. They behave completely as if they're obeying every convention there is and yet they are the nation that champions eccentrics. I don't look very normal, I don't dress very normal, I don't think too normal, and yet in this country I've been allowed to flourish. And it's precisely the appreciation, the shy and reserved British have for those who dare to do things differently, that makes this country so exciting to live in.
