The 23rd October 2022 would have been the 80th birthday of the late Dame Anita Roddick, a businesswoman, human rights activist and environmental campaigner, probably best known as the founder of The Body Shop.
Anita believed that business could be a force for good. “Business shapes the world. It is capable of changing society in almost any way you can imagine” – Anita Roddick, Founder of The Body Shop.
She opened her first shop in Brighton in 1976 and had a simple approach – ethically sourced and naturally based ingredients in no nonsense, refillable packaging.
Anita was an activist at heart and had a powerful drive for social change. Shocked by the images of starved, shaven-headed orphans that dominated the headlines after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist government, Anita Roddick decided to travel to Romania to see the situation for herself. When she first visited a Romanian orphanage in 1990, she was horrified to see scores of listless toddlers in cold, dark rooms that stank of urine. These children were caged in cots, day and night, and deprived of all human contact except when they were fed through the bars.
Anita quickly mobilised her company – The Body Shop, to send supplies, and a small group of volunteers, to help three orphanages in the remote village of Halaucesti. Rachel Bentley, 23 year old law graduate, was one of these volunteers, and together, they sparked the response that created Children on the Edge, a charity based in Chichester, which exists to this day to support some of the most marginalised children around the world.
Rachel says, “I owe my whole humanitarian career to Anita Roddick’s faith in me as a young woman. I got to know her pretty well, sleeping alongside her on the floor of a clinic in Romania. I’ll never forget what we found when we first arrived there. I remember the smell, the thick swarms of flies everywhere. Quiet and emaciated, children were lying in their own excrement for days and fed through the bars of the cots. They weren’t even touched”.
Once the initial response was complete, Rachel knew that the solution needed to be longer term. After the team had left, Anita asked her opinion on how the trip had gone. Rachel said, ‘If The Body Shop is really serious they’ll make a 5-year commitment in Romania and do it properly.’ To her surprise the next day Anita said ‘OK let’s do it. If you think it takes 5 years, then let’s do it.’
Rachel describes how, “Suddenly there I was – a 23 year old, working in a small team with Anita’s daughters, helping to lead an international humanitarian project. Within five years, our work had led to the closure of those dreadful institutions. We were young and stupid enough to think we could change the childcare system in Romania. Anita believed we could. And we did”.
By 1992, they started the charity Children on the Edge in an official capacity, together with The Body Shop. By this time, they had developed considerable expertise in working with institutionalised children, successfully integrating around 4,000 back into the society that had rejected them and creating brighter futures. The charity grew, and they applied what Anita had taught them: to trust their gut and always listen to people on the ground, who know the culture and understand the needs of their own people best.
Anita continued to guide and encourage Rachel, who says, “Anita knew that when you are young you have the energy and the ideas. At a time when I wasn’t being listened to, Anita listened. She would use her influence to ensure we were taken seriously by decision makers. For example, when at a refugee camp I became frustrated when the bigger aid agencies were discussing building shower blocks, and the conversations were going nowhere. I had suggested providing mobile showers, so we could meet the needs of refugees flexibly, but I was laughed out of the room. A week later Anita showed up and I told her about my shower idea, she immediately put it forward. People listened to her, and within 3 weeks we had them manufactured”.
Over 30 years later, Rachel still leads Children on the Edge, with head offices based in Chichester, with the same spark that she and Anita began, and The Body Shop has been a faithful pillar of support through each and every year. Rachel was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2022 for services to the protection and education of marginalised children worldwide.
Today Children on the Edge continue to adapt and respond, always working on the “edge” for a world where every child can thrive, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, caste or geography. The ‘edge’ in 1990 was the institutionalisation of children in Romania, and today, the ‘edge’ is refugee children; stripped of their rights to education, and denied their chances of a brighter future in Bangladesh, Lebanon and Uganda.
Children on the Edge have supported Rohingya refugee children living in Kutupalong, the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh. Since 2010 they have provided safe, colourful learning centres for thousands of children and now offer digital lessons in a language the children can understand.
In Uganda, the world’s fastest growing refugee situation sees tens of thousands of young Congolese children denied education at the most vital time in their development. Children on the Edge are working with communities in the Kyaka II refugee settlement to provide innovative education in classrooms and outside in ‘cluster groups’ for 9,000 of the youngest refugee children.
In Lebanon, the world’s largest refugee crisis, Children on the Edge have been supporting education for Syrian refugee children since 2014. This began in tented schools within the refugee camps of Bekaa Valley, but is now based in a purpose built school building in Zahle.
Education can break ongoing cycles of displacement and poverty, and the classroom creates a place where hope can begin, and children can start to flourish. Children on the Edge provide education for over 17,000 refugee children who have fled persecution, conflict or violence. Their award-winning programmes use innovative ways to enable access to education, working alongside local communities to find the best possible solutions. They train refugee teachers so that children can learn in their own dialect, from familiar, trusted adults that understand them. Their classrooms are fun and colourful environments where children are safe and can learn to express themselves.
You can support Children on the Edge with a one-off or regular donation via their website or by purchasing a gift from The Body Shop this Christmas.
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Children on the Edge is a child rights organisation that works hand-in-hand with communities to support some of the world’s most marginalised children, in some of the toughest situations.
They currently work with more than 20,000 children in Bangladesh, India, Uganda, Myanmar, and Lebanon, as well as Ukrainian arrivals in Moldova and Romania.
