Cultivating Care

“If you want someone to act, the first thing you must do is help them to care.”

 

David Begbie is International President of the Crossroads Foundation, a Hong Kong-based humanitarian organisation visiting LWC as part of a European tour.

 

Whilst in the 1200, Crossroads will deliver a groundbreaking immersive programme for the LWC community, which has been experienced by some of the most powerful people on the planet.

 

“When we reached our tenth anniversary, we asked how we could use that moment to show people why we serve,” David explains. “We thought, wouldn’t it be marvellous if we bring CEOs to our barracks, strip them of their possessions – their watch, their wallet, their phone – and give them hammers, nails and trash? We’ll let them build slums, sleep on the ground, eat with their hands and make roads by breaking rocks. We wanted to let them feel a fraction of what it’s like for those we serve.”

 

Crossroads has been helping people to care ever since.

 

“One of the CEOs that took part in that first event came back and told me ‘I’ve had three powerful moments in my life – the day I was married, the day I saw my first child born and this programme.’ He told me that he wanted his office to feel what he was feeling,” David continues.

 

Two decades later and Crossroads has developed a sophisticated collection of experience programmes designed to provoke empathy in all who take part in them. From plunging participants into simulations of refugee camps to immersing them in a life with scarce access to clean water. Nearly 250,000 people have taken part.

 

“The programmes exploded around us,” David admits. “We had already been working with the United Nations as an organisation. Then the UN called us and explained that the World Economic Forum met every year in Davos, where world leaders assembled to discuss global issues. They suggested we brought our refugee simulation to Switzerland for the leaders to experience. I tell you candidly, it’s a horrible experience with soldiers, guns, landmines and barbed wire. We built this thing in Davos and I honestly thought that no one would come.”

 

But come they did.

 

“Sir Richard Branson came, the CEO of Gucci, the Head of Wikipedia… then the Head of the UN. For more than a decade, we ran programmes in Davos. Kings, queens, presidents and their wives all went through,” David continues. “But what we love is not the names or the numbers. What we love is watching the world change. I love seeing charities bursting in response to people going through these programmes, students understanding how they’re connected to this planet and companies pivoting to affect change.”

   

“Poverty is everywhere, right? Its form looks different, but the pressures and struggles aren’t. Whether you are desperate in England or desperate in Afghanistan, you’re desperate.” 

— David Begbie

   

The Crossroads Foundation brings its Struggle For Survival simulation to the 1200 in a move instigated by Senior Deputy Head, Tom Hicks, who attended the foundation’s refugee experience in Hong Kong.

 

“It was a different, felt experience,” explains Mr Hicks. “It encourages us to think about why these people are in the situation they’re in and how we might respond. These are global issues, but the action can be local. We all have an ethical and social responsibility.”

 

With compassion, community connection and service all featuring in LWC’s cultural DNA, the invitation extended to Crossroads seemed an obvious one. Having delivered a whole school assembly, the organisation will then set up an immersive simulation for Lower Sixth Form students, before a Parental Engagement Programme experiential workshop in the afternoon for the wider College community.

 

“Struggle For Survival is one of the workshops that we’ve run at the World Economic Forum,” David explains. “It’s designed to try and deepen empathy for those in extreme poverty and to empower people to try and assist them. Poverty is everywhere, right? Its form looks different, but the pressures and struggles aren’t. Whether you are desperate in England or desperate in Afghanistan, you’re desperate.”

 

And beyond the CEOs and world leaders in Davos, do these simulations provoke the reaction in people that Crossroads first hoped they would at the very beginning?

 

“Many people I meet tell me with a profound depth of heart how the experience moved them a decade ago and still lingers with them,” David confirms. “In fact, there are people from developing nations like India and Rwanda who go through these programmes and admit ‘I grew up there, but I didn’t grow up there. This is the first time I’ve understood it from the inside.’ Empathy precedes sustained engagement.”

 

The engagement of the Crossroads Foundation has itself been sustained over the years. Set up by David’s accountant father and mother, who worked in PR, it came about as a result of a phone call that changed everything.

 

“One of the charities we’d been helping called and told us that two million people had lost everything in the worst flooding that this region of Hong Kong had seen in 100 years,” David reveals. “They asked what we could do to help these people who needed clothing in temperatures of minus 20 degrees. We ran into a woman at a local hospital who was looking to donate things. We took them from her and gave them to the NGO. They asked us for more and a school not dissimilar to LWC gave us 72 boxes, then 136, then 248. It was like a hole had opened in the heavens.”

 

Crossroads quickly discovered that in a country with a meagre market for second-hand goods, there was a place for an organisation capable of connecting those in need with those who can help. Since then, it’s helped up to a million people a year in more than 100 countries. “This is why we’re called Crossroads,” David explains. “Our job is to connect the roads of need and resource. Some of that resource is physical but people are resources too and we try to connect their hearts into engaging with the issues, whatever they are.”

 

You can read more about LWC’s Parental Engagement Programme here.

 

David Begbie/Crossroads Foundation