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Interview with Parent’s Circle Forum

Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content.

Today we’re talking about reconciliation in the face of deep conflict, and we’ll be talking with Robi Damelin. Spokesperson and director of International Relations for the Parents Circle Families Forum joined the organization after her son was killed by a Palestinian sniper.

All her work on the ground in Palestine, Israel, and internationally is geared towards non-violence and reconciliation Robbie was named as a 2015 Woman of Impact by women in the world, Layla Alsheikh. lives in Bethlehem in the West Bank in 2002. Her six month old son.

 Sai became ill and Israeli soldiers prevented Lila from taking him to the hospital for more than five [00:01:00] hours. Sai soon died from the lack of timely treatment. Lila joined the Parents’ Circle in 2016 following her son’s death. She never thought about revenge, but rather has devoted her time and energy to ensuring a better, more peaceful future for her children.

The Parents Circle Families Forum is a joint Israeli Palestinian organization made up of over 800 bereaved families. Their common bond is that they have lost a close family member to conflict, but instead of choosing revenge, they have chosen the path of reconciliation. Through their educational activities.

These bereaved members have joined together to take tens of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis on journeys of reconciliation. it is often raw and always emotional, but out of these interaction comes change. Not the kind of change that makes headlines, but a more [00:02:00] personal and profound shift in perspective.

As a joint Palestine and Israeli peace organization, the PCFF models, constructive dialogue around shared values. Even since October 7th, 2023, its staff members and thousands of participants are still committed to peace in a way forward that centers around empathy and humanization. The PCFF focuses on the shared value of the sanctity of human life.

This conversation brings our attention to the values that Palestinians and Israelis can agree upon, even in the darkness of times. Please join me in welcoming Robi and Layla. Hello. Hi.

Robi: Thank you for Yes.

Gissele: Oh, no. Thank, thank you so much for being on the show. Your message right now is, is so, so important. I wanna to start by giving each of you an opportunity to share your [00:03:00] stories.

Layla: Thank you. First of all, we are so honored to be with you today. my name is Layla. Alsheikh, I live in Bethlehem, but I was born and raised in Jordan. ’cause my family, they are originally from Bethlehem, but they went to Jordan ’cause my father was a teacher and he went there to teach the children in the refugees camps.

But after that war started in 1967, so, The government during that time, take a decision not to allow the Palestinian to return back. So they lost their citizenship and they become, Jordanian. I didn’t visit Palestine before that, but my father have thousands of stories about Palestine.

Layla: So I love Palestine from what I hear from my father. And for me, it’s become like a dream to return back and to, to visit all the places, all the people that my father talk about. And that dream come true in [00:04:00] 1999 after I met my husband, he’s originally from Bethlehem too. And, I returned back, after we engaged to get married and to start our new life.

And I was really being so happy to be here to, to return back to my roots and, That happiness become much more after one year when we have our first dau

Ep. 75-Mothers Building Bridges: Israel, Palestine and The Path to Unity

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Jenn Podcast Recording Forgiveness at Work

Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re gonna be talking about forgiveness.

My guest is Jennifer Griggs. She’s a renowned oncologist, researcher, leadership coach, and a narrative medicine practitioner. After a traumatic event at work, she had to learn to forgive, and in the process became a scholar of forgiveness and dignity. She leads a brilliant and passionate team that works to improve the quality of cancer care in Michigan USA by making good trouble.

She hosts the podcast. The Dignity Lab collaborates widely with creative people. Mothers, her two young adult daughters, supports her husband’s theater ventures and takes delight in the oak trees and bird songs in the woods where they live. Please join me in welcoming Jennifer.

Hi, [00:01:00] Jennifer.

Jenn: Hi. It’s great to see you.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Gissele: It’s great to see you too. I’m so excited to talk about forgiveness. I’d like to start, by asking you to tell the audience a little bit about how you got started in this work.

Jenn: Well, thank you. Thanks again for having me.

 When I discovered dignity, everything fell into place for me. So I consider myself a scholar of both. I think without understanding dignity, it’s hard for us to know why something hurt. It’s hard for us to take accountability for our part when.

Applicable. And I think it’s hard to see a way out of that victim stance. when I learned to forgive, I actually looked back on my whole life and realized I’d been a person of grievance. I had grievances against people going back to early in my life and found that I was oppressed by my own stance towards what had happened.

So for me, forgiveness has meant freedom, [00:02:00] dignity has made it fall into place and it’s. Paved a path forward for me. So forgiveness to me is giving up all hope of a better past in search of a better future.

Gissele: Hmm. I love that. I love that. And it takes a level of courage to be able to look at yourself and your history and acknowledge that you are person full of grievances.

Right? It’s much, much easier it feels to blame other people for those grievances. So I applaud that courage. I wanted to ask you what dignity means to you.

Jenn: Dignity originally meant somebody of value and worth. What’s interesting is when the Human Rights Commission in the 1950s came out with their statement of human rights, dignity was reconceptualized as our inherent worth or value.

Unlike respect, it doesn’t have to be earned. We’re born with dignity. From the minute we’re born, we have worth and value. No one would argue that a little baby who I think has net [00:03:00] negative when they’re first born, before they smile, has value and worth.

Gissele: And and that’s certainly true. I mean, when I think of babies, you’re right,

 they’re just naturally deserving of love, and I feel that way about every human being. Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you do in terms of forgiveness at work? In my experience. There hasn’t been a lot of forgiveness at work. workplaces tend to use a very punitive approach instead of more curiosity.

how have you found the forgiveness at work piece has been received by workplaces?

Jenn: Really, I work mostly with people who’ve been hurt at work, and the thing that is very clear is that systems can violate dignity, a

Ep. 74-Dignity and Forgiveness at Work with Dr. Jenn Griggs

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Conversation with Vivien

Gissele: [00:00:00]

Just wanna shout out to Feed Spot slash overcoming adversity for selecting our podcast as their top 10 podcasts.

Thank you. Thank you for acknowledging all our hard work. Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking about getting under the skin, journey from estrangement to forgiveness, and I’ll be talking to Vivien Kalvaria, whose creative journey began in Rhodesia, where she discovered a love for theater as a child.

Although she began her career on stages her true passion laid behind the scenes, producing and directing. She opened a drama studio for children and staged plays at the local theater. At 24, she was appointed news director for Rhodesia Television, the first television station in southern Africa.

After moving to South Africa and then to the United States, [00:01:00] Vivien turned her focus to writing. She’s the author of Break and Hold, and has just completed a deeply personal memoir. My Name is Not Rifka, about her mother-in-law, a Schindler survivor. The book explores tumultuous relationship, the scars of intergenerational trauma and what it truly takes to move from anger to forgiveness.

A lifelong student of Holocaust history and its psychological legacy, Vivien brings rare insight into the wounds of the past, echo through generations and what it means to heal them. Please join us in welcoming Vivien. Hi.

Vivien: Hi. Thanks for having me, Gissele. It’s good to be with you.

Gissele: Oh yes. It’s so great to be with you.

 I think this conversation is very, very timely.

 I was wondering if you could begin by telling the audience how you got to write this memoir for your mother-in-law.

Vivien: Well, in order to understand [00:02:00] the sort of genesis of all of this and to understand the forgiveness piece of this story, we have to go back to where it all began.

when I started dating Zach, that’s my husband, his mother, Rifka everything she could to sabotage our relationship for two years, she would randomly call me at all hours of the night hysterically crying, insulting, yelling, begging me to walk away from the relationship.

She refused to attend our wedding and turned much of the community against me. Only a handful of people actually showed up. I was devastated and furious, and for a couple of years we were estranged. What I didn’t understand then, but would come to learn much later, was that her behavior was rooted in her past.

Rifka carried wounds from traumas I knew nothing about. In fact, nobody knew about them, and that was the stumbling block. She [00:03:00] never spoke about her past for 50 years. It was this dark secret that everyone tiptoed around, her sons grew up, and knew nothing about what she’d gone through as a child. All we had was this tattoo on her arm, a daily reminder that she’d been in a concentration camp.

For me, her silence made it nearly impossible to understand her, let alone try and repair our relationship. So I stayed angry and resentful, not just because she had rejected me as a daughter-in-law, but because I had no frame of reference to understand what motivated her hostility. I couldn’t make sense of why she had waged such a fierce campaign to stop me from marrying her son.

There was nothing in my background or my family’s background to suggest that we had done something terrible. So for two years we were estranged.

Gissele: Did she ever tell you why, [00:04:00] specifically?

Vivien: She was just looking for an excuse. There wa

Ep. 73- Getting Under the Skin: Journey from Estrangement to Forgiveness with Vivian Kalvaria

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video1006284111

Gissele: [00:00:00]

was Martin Luther King Jr. Right? Does love have the power to turn an enemy into a friend? Does it have the power to heal? We’re creating an inspiring documentary called Courage to Love The Power of Compassion, which explores extraordinary stories of those who have chosen to do the unthinkable, love and forgive even those who have caused deep harm Through their journeys, we will uncover the profound impact of forgiveness and love, not only on those offering it, but also on those receiving it.

In addition, we’ll hear from experts who will explore whether love and compassion are part of our human nature and how we can bridge divides with those we disagree with. If you’d like to support our film, please donate at http://www.maitricentre.com/documentary.

 Hello and [00:01:00] welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele.

We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking about getting beyond division. My guest today is Scott Grace.Scott’s gifts are many. He’s a highly sought after author.

Singer speaker, workshop leader, life coach, and standup comedian who used to open for legends such as Robin Williams and Dana Carvey. He rose to prominence opening for rockstar authors and personal growth celebrities. He went on to start as this spiritual Dr. Seuss Combining entertainment, wisdom and comedy, becoming the headliner at new thought churches around the world.

Scott’s current project Beyond red and blue, staying human in Divisive times is planned for release. In the coming months, [00:02:00] Scott Blends humor, spiritual Dr. Seuss Rhimes music story and spiritual insight to help people feel less polarized, rise above outrage, and reconnect with themselves.

People with different viewpoints and yes, even the people who voted differently in beyond red and blue, Scott does not get political. Instead, he teaches and models how to become a part of the solution instead of contributing to the rising sense of polarization happening worldwide by depolarizing your mind no matter where you stand on the political spectrum.

Scott’s previous book. Is mindful masculinity, a book for men and the women who love them. Please join me in welcoming Scott. Hi,

Scott: Scott. Hi, Gissele.

Gissele: yes. I’m so excited to be chatting with you. I mean, I think this topic is so, so essential right now in a time where it seems very divisive.

 [00:03:00] I’m in Canada right now, and I’m telling you, I would’ve never thought that our neighbors in the US would not be. We would not have that strong relationship we used to have. Are you out of the states?

Scott: Well, yeah. I spend most of my time in a little village in, in Mexico Yeah.

Gissele: Nice. so I was wondering if you could tell the audience a little bit about how you got on this journey?

Scott: When, Donald Trump first got elected, he stirred the pot for many people and including me. And so I wrote a book called How to Evolve During the Trump Experience, whether Humanity Joins You or Not. And it was written mainly for liberals who were having a lot of trouble.

And I came across as, as one of them. Uh, so I revisited that book about a year ago and I realized that I no longer [00:04:00] want to promote divisiveness of any kind. So I’m rewriting the book so that it’s for everyone no matter what, political persuasion and it that it’s more about how do we, stay human in these kinds of times where, where extremes are the norm. Mm-hmm.

Gissele: First, I’d like to acknowledge how insightful tha

Ep. 72- Healing Division One Rhyme At a Time with the Spiritual Dr. Seuss (aka Scott Grace)

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Conversation with Sonny

Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Giselle. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking with Sonny Von Cleveland, who is a nationally recognized motivational speaker, author of Hey White Boy, conversations of Redemption, and a leading Voice for Trauma survivors. After overcoming 18 years in prison, in a childhood marked by severe abuse, Sonny now dedicates his life to helping others heal, find purpose, and rise above their past.

Please join me in welcoming Sonny. Hi, Sonny.

Sonny: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I so greatly appreciate you and thank you for such a wonderful, warm introduction.

Gissele: Thank you. Thank you so much for being on the show. I’m super excited to talk to you. I was wondering if you could tell our listeners a little bit about what led you [00:01:00] to the point where you ended up in solitary confinement.

Sonny: Sure. That was, a domino effect, I suppose, from being in the position that I was in in my life. This was 2008, so I had already had about nine years in prison, goes to 10. it’s just a very angry young man lost in a world of gang banging, self-absorption, you know, self-centeredness.

I had. Just previously found out that my oldest son’s mother started to have an affair with my brother and that they, she was pregnant by him, and that they were going to be taking my son and I wouldn’t be seeing him anymore. And he was gonna raise him as his own. And I really, really worshiped my brother, right?

growing up. It was just he and I in a single mother household. And he was always kind of my protector. And when that happened, I, I don’t [00:02:00] know, it wasn’t about her, it wasn’t about the fact that they were having an affair. it was the betrayal from the one person that meant the most to me, the only family member that I had left.

 you know, there’s a million women in the world. It’s actually 5 billion or so. You know, and he chose that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to do that. Yeah. And that, you know, like what that, what that does to the kid, to my son. Like the fact that you made my son believe he was, his father until, you know, he was 12 years old.

And it just, it was a conglomerate of all of those things. And then somebody had stolen everything outta my cell at one point while I was at work in the chow hall. I worked in the kitchen, and, I just took my anger out on him. And so it was unfair for him. those circumstances led me to being put into solitary confinement, which ultimately changed my life.

So, in a sense, I’m kind of grateful that my brother did that while it cost me, my son, it gave me the opportunity [00:03:00] to. Be who I am today. It turned completely, turned my life around. Going to segregation at that time. Right? Yeah.

Gissele: Yeah. And my understanding of your story is that you had also been betrayed by other family members, so that must have been particularly difficult in terms of your childhood experiences.

Sonny: It’s a thing. Yeah. You know, my first victimizer was my uncle. growing up losing my whole family because when I had talked about my molestation and my mother had had called the police and turned him in, he was sent to prison for 15 years and, and my whole family fell apart. So, to betrayal from a family member, I would always wanted, family, right?

 the first, you know, 7, 8, 9, 10 years of my life, we had that family structure, right? There was grandma’s house, there was cousins, there was aunts, there was uncles, there was a family. And then after that it

Ep.71- Solitary Confinement Wasn’t the End: How Sonny Found His Way Back to Love

TRANSCRIPT

Gissele: [00:00:00]

Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re gonna be talking about compassion in the workplace, can we work more humanely.

And our guest today is Dr. Bruno Rocky, Cigna, who is an international business consultant, TEDx speaker and researcher for over 30 years, he has advised and trained hundreds of companies on international trade activities and international marketing.

He also trains companies on topics related to compassionate business and human oriented leadership. He’s a university professor and a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the uk. He’s also author of the Business and Personal Development books published in various languages. The second edition of his [00:01:00] new book, the Art of Compassionate Business, is available now

 Please join me in welcoming Bruno. Hi Bruno.

Hello Gissele. How are you?

Gissele: I’m good about yourself. All the way from the uk. It must be late over there, right?

It’s

Bruno: a bit late. Thank you very much for your invite. I feel very honored to be here. Thank you.

Gissele: Yes, thank you. I’m so excited to chat. Because the state of the economy and the state of business, I feel is a little bit in disarray. Before we get started on that, can you tell the audience a little bit about how you got started in this work?

Bruno: Yeah. Thank you for the question. Yes. I started with this work more than three decades ago. I started as a consultant as an accountant at the beginning, and then as a consultant on international marketing and advise companies on, for example, international negotiation, international marketing strategy, international partnerships and international logistics.

And I have done this for a few decades, and [00:02:00] then I started over the last five, six years, I started working on a specific topic that is a non-traditional topic in business that is compassionate business. I started advising and training companies on how to become much more human oriented. This mean caring for different stakeholders such as employee, customer, community, member supplies, but also.

Being more profitable. So this mean that being profitable is not incompatible with being human oriented. And this gave me a lot of satisfaction because I observe that companies switch from a traditional model of being profit oriented to a much more much wider model, which include not only profit, but include people and the planet.

Gissele: Yeah, I love that you said that because people think it has to be a zero sum game, like one or the other. Right. Profit over people or people over profits. What you’re proposing is that you can do both. Right. So what did you observe that made you think that [00:03:00] compassion was the way.

Bruno: I started researching on this, and at the beginning I read an article that intrigued me a lot and was an article about the human moment at work that, uh, this article talk about, not about the strategies or tactics in business, but they talk about the importance of building a strong relationship with different stakeholders, for example, in the workplace.

Among colleagues, but also with other stakeholders, but also connecting to others in a much deeper way. This mean developing a much more uh, profound connection with others, which include mental and emotional aspect and try to build rapport with them. And this is important for business. And when I start researching on this for a few years, I observed that there is a lot of scientific papers, uh, scientific studies on the importance o

Ep.70- Heart Centered Leadership: Compassion at work with Dr. Bruno Cignacco

TRANSCRIPT

Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to The Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re gonna be talking about mindfulness in our living spaces, and our guest today is Kim Depole, founder of Depole Design in New York.

Seamlessly blends interior design with meditation to create spaces that nurture wellbeing and authentic self-expression. Her mindful process is rooted in the belief design is a collaboration of the mind and heart. Kim guides our clients inward, knowing that one needs to go inside to create a home that fully supports how you live, work, and restore.

Please join me in welcoming Kim Depole. Is that right?

Kim: You know, I love to say when somebody asks how to pronounce my name, I say, I say there’s the [00:01:00] North Pole. There’s the South pole, but there’s only Depole of design.

Gissele: Ooh. I love that. I love that. Can you start by telling the audience a little bit about how you got started and how you decided to combine mindfulness in design?

Kim: Well actually interior design is my second career. My first was as a creative director and after I quit my corporate job and lived in Japan and was inspired to travel all, you know, solo through Southeast Asia. When I came back, it was incredibly auspicious because I was offered a job where I was the assistant to somebody that did the first diff a show house, and I literally did not know anything about interior design.

Gissele: Mm-hmm.

Kim: And they let her go and, and by the second week they put me in charge. So it was trial by fire, but I just fell, absolutely in love. And then [00:02:00] fast forward back to school and started my design studio. So that was the whole trajectory and the connection to meditation, sort of ingrained in me at that time.

Gissele: does the Japanese style incorporate mindfulness and spiritual traditions? Yes. I

Kim: mean the whole. My favorite word is to ko ro, which is space as a state of being.

And I learned so much about how you live in your home and then in terms of optimization, the beauty, the ingrainedness of nature, natural elements were part and parcel of it. So it was almost like, I felt like I was. Steeped in that. And then when I came back to New York, it was, okay, so, you know, how do I integrate this belief into all of what I produce?

So I, think you might think of Japanese as style per se, but I think of it [00:03:00] as essence. Mm.

Gissele: I love that. It’s so funny because I haven’t really heard anyone. Have that conversation because you think about design, it’s like, well, I buy this piece of furniture and I put these pictures here and I add this color paint, but not as an expression of the inner world, not, it is like connecting that piece.

So I think this is why this conversation is for me, it’s so needed and so important because I do feel like our homes are a reflection of who we are. So I think that’s fantastic. So I heard you were on Oprah twice. Yeah, that

Kim: was another like, you know, like Manna from Heaven just happened.

I was doing a lot of TV shows for, you know, lifetime tv. They would send me to someone’s home. I had exactly like. Two hours to redo the entire, you know, second floor. And one of the producers fast forward, moved to Chicago and called me [00:04:00] and obviously she was in a terrible bind and said, can you drop everything?

 for a. Segment for Oprah. So, I mean, needless to say, you know, I put down the phone, danced around the studio, and then it was like, okay, wher

Ep.69- Designing from Within: Mindful Spaces and Sacred Living with Kim Depole

Transcript

Gissele: [00:00:00] Martin Luther King write, does love have the power to turn an enemy into a friend? Does it have the power to heal? This year, we are creating an inspiring documentary, courage to Love the Power of Compassion, which explores the extraordinary stories of those who have chosen to do the unthinkable love and forgive those who are most hurtful Through their journeys, we will uncover the profound impact of forgiveness love, not only on those offering it, but also those receiving it.

In addition, we’ll hear from experts who will explore whether love and compassion are part of our human nature, and how we can bridge divides with those we disagree with. If you’d like to support our film, please donate at [00:01:00] http://www.maitricentre.com/documentary

Penelope: Hello and welcome to The Loving Compassion Podcast with Giselle. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content.

Gissele: Today we’re talking about compassion to and from animals. And our guest today is Penelope Smith. Since the 1970s, Penelope has been the founding pioneer for the field, whose name she originated, interspecies Telepathic communication, author of the popular classic books in the field, animal Talk when Animals Speak.

Animals in spirit, many audio recordings and founding editor of Species Link Magazine. Penelope has held the hub of the growing community of animal communicators worldwide for decades. She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in social sciences, years [00:02:00] of training and experience on human counseling, nutrition and holistic body energy, balancing methods, research into animal nutrition, anatomy, behavior, and care, plus the firsthand education from thousands of animals.

She has contacted Penelope’s Visionary work has been featured in numerous newspapers, articles, magazines throughout the US and beyond, and she has developed true and tried telepathic communication techniques which complement current scientific knowledge and traditional methods. Her methods foster people’s ability to understand and communicate with animals on many levels, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

As a trailblazer and world renowned teacher of basic and advanced interspecies telepathic communication, she has helped launch the careers of numerous professional animal communicators. Penelope feels that the sacred connection we make [00:03:00] through telepathic communication with other species is essential for human wholeness.

She believes that everyone is born with the power to communicate with other species, and that although it is long lost for many people, it can be regained for the benefit of all beings on earth. Please join me in welcoming the one and only Penelope Smith. Hi.

Penelope: Hi. Thank you. Great to be here. Thank you. Yes.

Gissele: Thank you for being on the show.

I’m so thrilled to have you on the show. This is a topic I’ve definitely been wanting to talk about, especially around a compassion to and from animals.

I was wondering if you could start by telling the audience, how did you discover that you had this incredible gift?

Penelope: Well, it was always a part of me. I always loved animals. It’s very natural for kids. To just gravitate to animals until they’re stopped by other humans. You really can’t keep children away from animals.

And for me, [00:04:00] I was aware of who I was, my nature as a spiritual being, why I came in and who everybody else was. So the animals, I recognize them as fellow spiritual beings. And I communicated with them, they communicated with me. I got their thoughts and their feelings. They got my thoughts and f

Ep.68- What Animals Can Teach Us About Love – Penelope Smith on Animal Communication

Transcript

Gissele: Martin Luther King write, does love have the power to turn an enemy into a friend? Does it have the power to heal? This year, we are creating an inspiring documentary, courage to Love the Power of Compassion, which explores the extraordinary stories of those who have chosen to do the unthinkable love and forgive those who are most hurtful Through their journeys, we will uncover the profound impact of forgiveness love, not only on those offering it, but also those receiving it.

In addition, we’ll hear from experts who will explore whether love and compassion are part of our human nature, and how we can bridge divides with those we disagree with. If you’d like to support our film, please donate at [00:01:00] http://www.maitricentre.com/documentary

 . Hello and welcome to The Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele

We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re gonna be talking about compassion and love in the foster care system. Our guest today is Peter Mutabazi entrepreneur international advocate for children and founder of Now I am known a corporation that supplies resources to encourage and affirm children.

Peter is a single dad, foster parent, who was a former street kid in Uganda. He has worked for Compassion International and the Red Cross. He has appeared on BBC in the Today Show and is author of the book now I am known. Please join me in welcoming Peter. Hi Peter.

Peter: Hey, how are you?

Gissele: I’m good. [00:02:00] How are you?

Peter: I’m good. What a joy to be with you today.

Gissele: Yes. I’ve been, I’ve been following your story for such a long time. I’m such a huge admirer of the work that you do. I followed your story with Anthony and also I used to work in the child protection system and so lots of issues with children that didn’t feel loved and accepted and with sometimes struggling with foster parents who didn’t understand the behavior problems.

And so that’s why your journey is such powerful, powerful reminder of how important it’s to have presence, to have compassion, including for yourself. So I’d like to begin by asking you how you got to this place. Like what was your journey like in terms of going from the streets of Uganda to now having this incredible social media presence and really kind of carving a new way for foster care?

Peter: Well, you know, I was, you know, I was born in Uganda among the poor of the poorest you could imagine. You know I [00:03:00] never had one meal a day. I had one meal every other day. We could not afford beans and potatoes, you know, grew up in a place where I had to go fetch water three to four miles away one way twice a day, like there was no time to be a child.

And two, you know, at age of four, I began to realize that not only are we poor, but my dad was abusive as well. So grew up in a place where, you know, the only words I heard for my dad was, you’ll never amount to anything. You’re nobody. I wish you never born. So I did not have to feed you. And those are the things I heard for my dad.

So for me, internally, life was miserable outside. It was miserable. at the age of, you know, 10, I, I, I knew my father would kill me, so I thought, wait a minute, you know, I would rather die in the hands of a stranger.

So I ran away, and that’s how I became a street kid. And from the age 10 to almost 16. As street kids, we are treated more like stray animals. Like really, people viewed us as we are, we are nobody. We are scum of the earth in some way. Mm-hmm. And somehow we believed it because that’s what we looked like. I mean, I lived in a

Ep.67- Building a Compassionate Child Welfare System with Peter Mutabazi

TRANSCRIPT

Gissele: Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re gonna be talking about rethinking how we do business in a time of great upheaval. my guest today is Jeff Ma, who is a director of product development at Culture Plus host of the Love as a business strategy podcast and bestselling author of love as a Business Strategy coming up through a decade in the gaming industry. Jeff eventually found his niche in project management and agile coaching at Soft Way.

As he continued working with teams and clients in Scrum and agile environments, however, he started seeing the stronger underlying importance of culture in truly high functioning performing teams. Pushed by a combination of his own introspection, feedback from [00:01:00] his colleagues, and a whole lot of uncomfortable practice, Jeff shifted head first into a new mission that he shares with his team.

To bring humanity back to the workplace. Nowadays, he’s hyper-focused on helping people find a workplace culture that allows them to be their whole selves, their best selves. Jeff is leading the development of various products and tools that are crafted with the culture of love at its center. As a facilitator of Culture Rise and other experiences in the Culture Plus Suite, he’s also connecting and transforming leaders around the world directly helping them to improve their mindsets, behaviors, and leadership capabilities.

Please join me in welcoming Jeff. Hi Jeff.

Jeff: Hello, how are you, Gissele?

Gissele: I’m doing great. I think this is a perfect conversation to have nowadays because I feel like the world is in a little bit of an upheaval when it comes to the economics, I [00:02:00] think,

Jeff: In terms of a lot of things. Yeah.

Gissele: Yeah, for sure.

So to get started I wanted you to tell the audience a little bit about how you got started in this work.

Jeff: Wow. So it’s, it’s actually a lot of the book that we wrote, love is a business strategy centers around this change. But, you know, I was just like anybody else working a, you know, a, a kind of a job in a nine to five kind of technology company called Soft Way, which I still do today, but software was very different back then.

But basically software went through an interesting change. Around 2016, it almost went outta business. And the story centers around our CEO Mohammed, who’s a co-author of the book as well. But it starts with Mohammed and kind of grows into others. But the gist of it is, mm-hmm. That when we’re kind of in our worst moment where we had done mass layoffs, morals, and all time low

Gissele: Yeah.

Jeff: Things are not looking good. Mohammed kind of had a moment of, of. [00:03:00] Self-realization in which he went to actually a football game, a University of Houston football game, which he’s a huge fan of. Mm-hmm. But they played a game that was really important. It was like their 10th, 10th straight victory with no losses that season, if they could pull it off.

But they were down by by insurmountable amount in the fourth quarter, and all the statistics showed that it was over. They had a 0.1% chance of winning, and basically people were already leaving that game, leaving that stadium turning off their TVs, and Mohamed decided to stay in that game. He witnessed one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the program.

And they came back and won. And that really invigorated him to try to figure out what it is that makes a great team resilient like that. And that coach in particular, that, that was a rookie coach his

Ep.66- Love and Leadership: Jeff Ma on Building a Compassion-Driven Workplace

Love and Compassion Podcast-Where Gissele talks with everyday exceptional people
who have overcome adversities and have wisdom to share.

Gissele Taraba

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