On Repurposing Struggle into Strength - A Conversation with Lucy Antrobus

Episode Transcript

Claire  00:06

Hi everyone, welcome to a new episode of Narratives of Purpose. I am your host Claire Murigande. On this podcast I bring you inspiring individual stories of ordinary people making extraordinary social impact. My guest today is Lucy Antrobus. Lucy is the founder of Refugee Voices, an NGO based in Lausanne, which works to empower refugees and other marginalised groups in Switzerland through self confidence, storytelling and capacity building programmes. In our discussion, Lucy tells me about her ambition to make an impact in the world by tapping into the human potential in diverse communities. Please take a moment to rate and review the show by subscribing on your preferred podcast platform. But for now, have a listen to Lucy's story and her passion to empower people to find their voice. Welcome to the podcast. Lucy, how are you today?

 

Lucy  01:06

Hi, Claire. I'm feeling fantastic today. Great to be here with you.

 

Claire  01:09

Thank you so much for joining me, I'm really excited to have you on the show today. So Lucy, you are the founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Refugee Voices. And you are one of the people I very recently met through LinkedIn. When we connected I found that you had such a fascinating profile for two reasons. First, you came across as a really inspirational person with a lot of energy and so much power. And the second thing is that I was intrigued by Refugee Voices. What was that organisation? At the same time, you had two words describing you and your profile, you know, next to CEO, entrepreneur, board advisor, facilitator and speaker, you had two words, which really piqued my curiosity. Those words were a confidence catalyst, I would like you to tell me more about Refugee Voices, and what it means to be a confidence catalyst. But before we dive into that, I would like to let you introduce yourself and share a few words of your background for our listeners.

 

Lucy  02:10

Sure. Well, thank you so much, Claire, for the lovely introduction, You buttered me up there, I hope I can meet those expectations of the energy and inspiration is very, very humbling. I will bounce off of you there with this intrigue around the confidence catalyst to articulate a little bit about who I am. So the confidence catalyst in a way is a bridging of two worlds where we have coming together of this scientific part of me, represented by that catalyst piece, having a background, a master's in sustainable chemistry, actually, at the outset, wanting to be an eco warrior, when I first started out in my professional life. And then on the other side of it, this confidence piece of seeing around the world in different communities having worked in Mexico, Korea, across Europe, Africa, and beyond that no matter where and what community, there's often these amazing untapped sources of human potential. And there's an expression which goes "human potential is the only limitless resource in the world". And so it was kind of a fascination of wondering with my scientific experimental brain, how we can tap into that and empower more and more communities. So that's a little bit about my origins, including some Englishness for sure, and some South African heritage and how that manifests now, which is the kind of mission and impact I want to make into the world, which I had currently summarised into, let's say, three circles. And it links to what we do at refugee voices. And that is enabling people to find their voice. And what I mean by that is daring, being bold enough to express who they are in society and make a positive contribution. The second is owning their story, no matter where they come from, what their restrictions or their superpowers that they really own who they are, because then they can show up as their biggest and boldest selves. And then finally, using all of that, to channel that to make a positive impact into society. And maybe that's how bridging how you connected with me and how I also was inspired by what you do is sharing more and more stories of people who are daring to go out and make a positive contribution. And I attempt to be one of those people on a daily basis.

 

Claire  04:26

Wow, that's really amazing. And I really love the eco warrior part you just mentioned there. So you've given me a bit of insights on Refugee Voices. But can you expand and tell me, what is the purpose in essence of your organisation?

 

Lucy  04:42

On the most fundamental level, what we do at refugee voices is about repurposing struggle into strength. And we do that through storytelling by using storytelling as a vehicle for personal transformation. I'll give you an example in a moment of what that concretely looks like. But first, what are the actual impacts of this experience of this transformation? And one piece is quite simply enabling people to feel good in their skin. And there's an expression in French, which is "se sentir bien dans sa peau" which just translates to, "to feel good in one's skin". And that really resonates in our community. Because when people have lived through all sorts of trauma, whether it's been starving in the desert for several weeks, whether it's being intercepted by smugglers, whether it's having lived out of dustbins for several weeks, trying to hustle and just trying to stay alive, that actually just to be in an environment where you feel good in your own skin is very simple, but incredibly powerful. And that can have an impact on how you interact with people and how you show up when you walk into a room. And so the knock on effects are quite holistic. And we aim for that as a result of our confidence catalysing that people feel firstly better in themselves, that they realise and recognise the value that they have as an individual in the person. And as a result of that they connect to their most powerful self and start channelling and using that powerful self to make a difference in their lives and have self agency over their future. So then, in society, how this manifests is, for example, the speed at which they acquire the local language like French, that will increase because they're more participative. And they're less fearful in their French class, or the depth to which they build and make relationships becomes better and more meaningful, because they have less fear, to share and share and exchange with things that are true to themselves. And finally, that has an impact on their employability as they're able to show up, dynamic, confident, look the interviewer in the eyes for a professional interview, and form those relationships inside those internships or jobs which enable that more sustainable professional integration.

 

Claire  06:57

Okay, I see. So it's really an approach that has a holistic impact, right?

 

Lucy  07:01

Yes. And it's really about looking what we noticed, or we started to identify when we, when we first entered the space, which was just in 2019, not long ago, with our fresh eyes was that often in this space, people can be looked at as human statistics and looked at from the perspective of what are they missing? What languages do they not speak? What skills do they not have? And I at least personally, was amazed and incredibly in awe of some of the refugees I encountered who spoke Tamil, they spoke Farsi, they spoke French, they speak English with German languages from all around the world, which implies a real agility of mind to be able to operate in, and there's different operating systems in a way over the brain. And thought, wow, well, if we can build up and leverage what they have, versus what they don't have, then maybe that strength of power, and that value in the difference can be used to strengthen their future. And so what we looked at this rather than fixing and highlighting "you're good in all of these ways, but you don't speak French yet, let's work on that" it's rather working from this human centric approach of, "wow, let's value you for a second for who you are, and where you come from. And maybe by getting you to reconnect with that personal pride that is often lost, when you've been in grief, you've lost loved ones, when you've been through trauma, then if we help you reconnect with that pride, actually, we don't need to fix any of those other things, because your increased confidence and engagement will enable you as as an empowered individual to go after and gain those new skills where you need them." So it's just a shift in the type of approach that we would typically see see in the local ecosystem

 

Claire  08:43

is actually quite powerful at the same time. It just makes sense. It feels normal, right, that you would first focus on the human. And somehow it's, it's a bit astonishing that it hasn't been done before, you know. And I find that quite interesting.

 

Lucy  08:58

I think I have a massive amount of respect for the institutions that already exist, and particularly the government ones who I think in Switzerland are incredibly generous. And there's a lot of infrastructure and support. And so really the position or standpoint we come from is how can we make you more effective, you more sustainable to increase your results. And so we're very much oriented towards supporting our partners working in collaboration to complement what is already there, which I think is very significant, I think compared to other countries, and  then leverage some of the great innovation also coming out of the space. So for example, some of the intrapreneurship incubators such as Singer or Capacity based in Geneva and Zurich, have these awesome programmes. How can we enable those programmes to be even more successful, as well as complementing the governmental institutions such language and so forth? That's what we also noticed: it's incredibly simple, incredibly powerful, and often things that are so close to us are the easiest thing to miss. Maybe it was worth it that all of our team initially had no experience in the refugee or migration space. And we just came at it from a totally fresh, lean startup, how can we make a positive contribution and this kind of naive approach of wow, well, just like anything else, by practising something, you can learn it and grow that skill or capacity. And that's definitely a core mantra of our community and how we view how we view talent that anybody can be whoever they want to be, as long as they show up, they participate with their whole hearts, and a whole bunch of other ingredients, Your fate is not sealed, or based on where you come from, or what your current situation is.

 

Claire  10:38

Now, I'd like you to share more insights and tell me, what led you to create Refugee Voices?

 

Lucy  10:44

The creation of Refugee Voices was, in a way, the unification of two parallel but Connected Forces, and one was my personal motivations and interest in diversity and how diverse talent and human potential can enable us to live in a more innovative and dynamic world. I'll get more into that in a minute. And then on the other side, noticing a gap in the ecosystem starting with Switzerland, specifically the refugee ecosystem integration ecosystem in Switzerland, in a way, at that time, I was looking to move out of a multinational, having worked in lots of different places, devising strategies for how we grow businesses in the Americas, to Europe and in Asia, and looking at how I could really, with my diverse international experience, manifest the world in one room and add value, where I was contributing to people on a human to human level, and really getting a tangible sense of positive impact. So that was on the one side, my personal motivations. And then where this ended up, manifesting was also simultaneously noticing that in the refugee integration ecosystem in Switzerland, it's an amazing country from the perspective that there's a lot of welfare support for different types of communities. So in Switzerland, if we think about Maslow's Pyramid of Needs, you have in the majority of cases, accommodation provided for a basic social stipend, access to language classes, so in a very basic way people are unable to survive and have the basic shelter type support they need. But I noticed that in a certain population, where you have really talented, highly educated, and you could call them high potential group of refugees who are in their past lives, engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers typically sought after skill sets in Europe, that unemployment was a big issue, but they had access to basic to integration infrastructure, but something something was missing, and something was not enabling that to be successful in them getting, professional employment, and other opportunities. So when realising this we dug into, and there's a few encounters with different organisations, where what's actually going on here, if they're talented, they've got network access, and they've got support to get access to jobs. And the feedback I got was, the biggest problem we have is their confidence. It's not their technical skills, but it's their confidence. And I thought, wow, well, just like anything, confidence is something that you can build, and you can increase and acquire through practice. So that led to a variety of experiments, and then research on looking at the fact there's 90% unemployment rates in certain canteens, what can we do about this? And if we just provide this one missing piece, we can actually enable working with partners, the rest of the integration ecosystem to become sustainable. And that's a win-win-win. Win from the perspective of the individual, they gain so much pride and self esteem when they're employed or in game for opportunities. The second is on the level of the employers gain and benefit and the businesses. And the third is more broadly on the level of society having less unemployment, less clashes between different subsections of the culture and the community. So to summarise back to that there were personal motivations that led me to want to work in the human impact and social impact, dynamic kind of intrapreneurship ecosystems, with a focus towards diversity of some shape or form, whether it be women, different communities or other. And wanting to make the biggest amount of positive impact possible, which often means working with the most marginalised in the community, and then simultaneously noticing that there was this need on the ground, but with providing one small piece that could make the rest of the ecosystem sustainable.

 

Claire  14:43

You just mentioned something there in part of your answer, which is Maslow's pyramid of needs. Can you tell me about that? What is it exactly?

 

Lucy  14:50

Sure. So there's different schools of thought as to how accurate this is. So psychologists, they cut me some slack here. In essence, it is a pyramid, which structures or categorises human needs based on what is the most important and urgent. And if you have the lowest ones in the pyramid, then you're able to access the higher levels. So for a concrete example, the lowest needs would be but most important, the first pillar, as it were, would be things such as food, and shelter, you're able to survive, and you're not fighting life and death on a day to day basis. And as you go higher up the pyramid, you would arrive at something like self actualization, which would be not only that you are, for example, employed, but then you're doing something that leverages your strengths, where you feel fulfilled, you're stretching your potential, and then everything else in the middle is a sliding scale in between. And the idea is that by starting at the bottom, if you fulfil your basic needs, you're enabled then them to access and begin to gain value from from the levels above.

 

Claire  15:58

Another question. There's a point I wanted to address earlier, you mentioned marginalised communities. So which communities are which groups are you working with?

 

Lucy  16:07

So we focus on young refugees, and these are people who come from Yemen, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Sri Lanka, all over the world. Usually focusing on refugees up to the age of 35, we focus around the slightly younger ones, and that's our main group, plus a mixture of individuals who are from typically a migrant background, also Swiss who can come from anywhere but who are motivated to participate in our programme, because we believe the magic is in the mix, and there's great inspiration and learning throughout the programme in addition to the programme, objectors can happen by diverse minds meeting and mutually inspiring, so to call out a few types of communities that we that we work with its refugees, its migrants, to a certain extent, asylum seekers, we've worked with women who face domestic abuse, we are looking to work with people who've had rare diseases, women of different shapes and forms rural women intrapreneurs in North Africa, and beyond. So we have quite a lot of different communities that we work with. But the idea is always around, empowering them to connect to their voice to take a stand, make a positive contribution, and an impact to their society or connect to their most powerful selves and leverage that impact

 

Claire  17:25

to build upon that. You mentioned earlier, a three month programme, what is it exactly that you offer those who joined refugee voices.

 

Lucy  17:33

The programme is a three month programme, which has weekly sessions, where they start from perhaps being shy or having certain inhibitions to then at the end of the programme, standing in front of an audience sharing a deeply personal story in an engaging way about something of real lived experience and connecting it to where they want to go in the future. What we find as a result of this is, they gain this moment of pride that can act as a springboard for where they want to go in the future. Because if they've done something that they believed was previously impossible, has now become possible. What else can they do? What else can they achieve in their future? And then on the other hand, it provides this source of inspiration to the local community, or those who show up virtually or in person to challenge stereotypes around what refugees or migrants are people in general, as well as providing them a source of inspiration that they can also make a difference. To recap on that is a three month programme around a two hour session, once every week, we're now running our programmes virtually. So wherever you're based there is a possibility to join. We have some key attributes of who we accept onto the programme, but a really key one is motivation. So if that shows up in force, then it's pretty hard for us to say no, we are with big hearts.

 

Claire  18:51

I know it's always difficult to pick an example of success or something specific to showcase, really what you have done. But do you have some highlights that you can share this point on how this programme has impacted those who attended it?

 

Lucy  19:09

Yes, absolutely. With our partnerships that we did, at the beginning of last year, the beginning of 2020, with the concierge nerve, which is that famous prestigious Grand Théâtre de Genève based in Geneva, Switzerland, and another NGO who focuses on using culture in the arts for integration of diverse communities. And what we were doing there is we had this pivotal role working between operatic and actor, professionals and refugees, where we had to basically take these refugees and in the space of six weeks, get them from from zero experience to being ready to be performing in an opera in this famous opera house, live with professional actors and singers. So our focus of that project was building them with a skill set to be able to work with professionals to have stage presence and have some creative flair that they actually add value to the production, as opposed to just being extras. And the particular relevance or beauty of this project was that it wasn't just any average opera, the opera was called "voyage vers l'espoir" in French, which in English means journey towards hope. And it was a modern opera written about the journey of a Turkish family migrating from Turkey, coming to Switzerland. And so the director and the artistic team wanted to replicate and manifest this authenticity in its cast members. And also not only use it as storytelling, but use it as a mechanism of empowerment by providing jobs to refugees to be able to then participate in one of the finest cultural institutions in Switzerland. So that was a really beautiful project. And to come to a concrete example of what is the name of one person, I will rename for discretionary purposes. So Kali, Kali was a young man from Afghanistan, around 25 years old, who participated in this programme, and he stood up at the end of the programme. And he shared it as a means of expressing himself, showing his artistic intent, and being vulnerable and courageous in front of a group of around 30 people. He shared Albert Camus Nobel Prize acceptance speech, but in a way that pivoted on his own particular reflections about what art meant to him. And some of the phrases in that dialogue included, "I cannot live without art" And so he goes on to, to describe this experience and connection and relationship with art. And it was so beautiful and so embodied, I was incredibly impressed with his performance. So we had this incredibly inspiring evening, and I heard people say, who have worked in that space for 10 years. So wow, I worked with refugees and with these organisations, but I've never seen them like this. There was this real eclectic inspiration in the energy in the room. But what does that all really mean? Well, so fast forward, we then had a conversation between our team and the team of our partners at associational, antidotes. Huda, who lives in that organisation, said that one of the individuals, this young man, Kali, said, it was incredible because I've known this young man for several years. But before he did not speak, so in a way that moment kind of embodied why we do what we do, why we did what we did, because even if just one person is moved from a position of having a fear, to speak and share about themselves, whether through past trauma, or whatever, the reason, not feeling accepted, to not only having a voice, and speaking and interacting to make relationships, all sorts in the rest of their life, but they dare to be vulnerable and share how much art means to them. And in relation to their dreams. We thought, wow, if we can do this for one man, one young man, we have a responsibility to keep doing it and enabling that for other people.

 

Claire  23:14

That is absolutely incredible. And very impressive. Congratulations on your work for that. Let me come back to something I had noticed on your profile as well, is that your organisation is barely two years old. But within this time, you've already received quite a few prizes. From what I saw, you have three different awards. So there's the plain of a traditionally, from Consultative Chamber for Immigrants from the Canton of Vaud. You have the community award from the SINGA and ownership factory. And then you have the medal for Wisdom and Compassion and the Jury Prize for the FoodFestival. So on one hand, it's quite impressive for something that says it has been in existence for only two years. But what do these prizes mean to you?

 

Lucy  24:03

Well, the first and easy way is, it's just an excuse to celebrate our fantastic team and remind them of how awesome they are from an external perspective and just encourage them to keep doing the awesome job that they are doing. And then on top of that, I think it provides some of the fuel of what we do because we are still a small, bootstrapped NGO, that is built on a mission, a built on passion, and is often fueled by the testimonials of our participants about how powerful it is for them in their lives. But it's also incredibly encouraging when there are external bodies who can bring another perspective and other credibility and resource and support to encourage us likewise, that what we are doing can become sustainable. Not only are the beneficiaries who we work with the refugees and so forth benefited, but also that the team gains a sense of pride. What we do at refugee voices is not just about our beneficiaries. It's not just about a team member. It's not just about our community. But it's really in our holistic approach about all of those things we aim for that everything that we touch has a positive impact. And that means that, of course, the beautiful, awesome inspiring beneficiaries are inspired, leave more powerful gain skills that they wouldn't otherwise have, when they leave our programme that also our team grow, become bigger leaders versions of themselves, and likewise, that our community gets to feel some of this inspiration and tangible impact on their lives. So I suppose the prizes are symbolic of encouraging us that we are moving in the right direction. And showing us that as we aim, and we strive to be collaborative, when we strive to have a positive impact in different areas that this is also being seen and heard, those prizes that you mentioned, one was from festival sustainable innovation. Another was from an entrepreneurship incubator for migrants. And the latter was the first one you mentioned was from a local government body. So these are different stakeholders in different parts of society that are recognising us. And I guess that matches our holistic vision and mission to contribute to society at large and all these different areas. Symbolically, it's just really exciting that, if we're being recognised in that way from the government, from intrapreneurship incubators, from festivals, sustainable innovation, we can keep doing what we love doing, and that's food for the soul for our team.

 

Claire  26:31

I like that food for the soul. So yeah, it's quite encouraging in showing that you're on the right path. One other thing to bounce back on something that you just said, you mentioned that you're still a small organisation and still bootstrapped. What has been the major challenge for you putting together this organisation? Because, you know, I can imagine it's not straightforward to come up with this idea of our organisation, which is building confidence for marginalised communities. What were your major challenges, perhaps one or two that you had to face? And how did you get the support to go through it?

 

Lucy  27:11

among a whole host of challenges, I'll speak about one which is very personal to me, and had a strong impact last year, between 2019 and 2020, was, let's call it the impact of working with people and getting them to connect with and share very personal stories that times of great difficulty. And our community has collectively trained over over 350 migrants of different shapes and sizes in Switzerland and beyond, through facilitating that journey of people sharing some of their struggles, and typically living inspired and moved by that there was a point that came into my life where people were leaving a room inspired, sharing things that they hadn't connected with people for years previously. And I felt exhausted, I felt sad, I felt tearful, and in a way just collapsed, and sort of had, luckily, very good friends to, to welcome me and let me just cry it out. And that was a really worrying sign for something that I love doing. But that really rocked me as a person. And in exploring and starting to realise in the same way that I was giving support to these refugees, and we were as a community and an organisation, I also needed to build in support infrastructure, so that I could continue inspiring and empowering and having a joyful time doing it, as opposed to giving all of myself away and leaving, not much left to take care of myself. So there's different schools of thought. Some psychologist would return some of what I was experiencing transferal trauma. I think it's a new new science, in some ways, at least in the conflict resolution or the aid worker space, amongst other things. But I guess the big takeaway from that was to put strong people around me who could support me so that I could keep supporting others. So that filtered into various filtered into plans and how we reorganise our organisation, subsequently, some coaching support that we got, and very much as a strong theme for me in 2021, of having really awesome mentors around me who often happen to be older women with experience and wanting to give back and support other young women to perhaps get to get to where they have come.

 

Claire  29:35

Thank you. That's quite an important aspect. And it's very moving. So thank you for opening up and sharing that with me. I really appreciate that. Now, let's look ahead. What is in the future for your organisation? Do you have great dreams or things that you absolutely want to put in place that you can share here?

 

Lucy  29:58

Yes, we do. We I'm very excited about this year. And I'm very excited, particularly because I'm very proud of our team and I see it flowering and blooming even more this year. The growth of the journey starts from within and starts from the nest, which is the team in our case. So concretely, what are some of the things we're excited about this year? Well excited about growth, because we've identified this very simple formula, which I haven't spoken much about. So feel free to get in touch listeners to learn more about that, which enables people to go from that closed bird or butterfly cocoon into that blooming butterfly in a very short space of time. And because it's so simple, and it's very easy to put in place, you just need a handful of humans really, and you can make it happen, that we have this great sense of responsibility to want to share this, we see the impact and the results, it has people who go from how before I felt depressed, I was Insomniac, I could not sleep. And now they're beaming, they've got a new job as carpenter, they have the most beautiful smile you've ever seen walking around. So in that vein, we want to increase our partnerships and collaborations this year. And we are looking to do that in three ways. The first way is that we want to take our know how from from Switzerland and enable other organisations to benefit that are out of our geographic borders. So we're working on a collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in North Africa, so that we can pass on this know-how to other communities and enable them to take forth and multiply. The second way is that we want to expand our range of the kind of services or programmes that we offer. And by that I mean, moving from our classical confidence style workshops, whether that's a three month programme, a six week programme, or programmes with partners and using storytelling and other means adding on top of that, a train the trainer module programme, which enables people who are really excited and graduates not only community to not only experience the programme for themselves been able to learn those tools, so that they can take it away and use it in their communities, whether in Switzerland or beyond. So it's shifting from just doing in house to passing that knowledge on to our partners more formally. And then the third area is that we have thus far, principally focused, though not exclusively on refugees. And we realise that, whether it's a senior, an elder person who's been made redundant looking to reestablish their careers, or its young women who are fearful of being in a male dominated environment, looking to expand their career when they're fresh out of university, or refugees, we see that actually, we all have a lot in common, and we all have similar desires. And so we'd like to enable sharing this knowledge or programmes to communities who are not just refugees, but really from lots of different walks of life. With Such strong ambitions, we want to go to Africa. We want to scale, we want to enable more partnerships, and ultimately, beyond all of the growth plans. very concretely, we want to keep that quality that we have in our community, and keep enabling those most beautiful moments when someone goes, "now I realised that if I believe I can, I can do it." So those are the kinds of moments we are ultimately trying to manifest in the 1000s in 2021.

 

Claire  33:34

That sounds really exciting. And I hope that you will be successful. Before we come to the last part. I have one more question. It's one of my favourite questions, actually, do you have a piece of advice that you were given at some point in your life that you still consider today to have served you throughout your journey? And what is that advice?

 

Lucy  33:54

there's so many lessons, I could give you a lot, there's been so much learning in the last year or two. But to give you one concrete one, which I think is applicable to anybody out there, especially if you're looking to make a career shift, realise some kind of goals that seem way out there and unachievable, but you want to you want to give them a try, at least is to put cheerleaders around you. And by that I mean, they don't have to be people who are significantly more experienced, like coaches or mentors. But people really who on a day to day basis, you can come to when you're feeling wobbly, or when you've had a problem and share what you're doing and they will just be there for you or they will at the base of things, believe in you and encourage you to keep going. And I think there's a space where people talk about what kind of roles or profile you need in your life and you need mentors and you need coaches to push and mentors to support you, coaches to push and stretch you. But I'd add a third category there which is cheerleaders. I've noticed or experienced this: The nominal power of cheerleaders, especially in our more isolated, physical environment, because of COVID-19 in 2020. And as it continues, that having creative partners in crime, sisters in the hood, people who are going to push and inspire you, but particularly will believe in you, no matter what, whether it's friends or family, to be incredibly powerful, and just give a shout out to, to some of my my sisters in the hood, as I call them, who, when I've been on this rocky, rocky journey, cried my eyes out, not understanding what is happening to me, or being challenged with a rejected application of our funding or otherwise, that they've been there and been incredibly supportive. So I'd call it cheerleaders, or in the words of Julia Cameron, a believing mirror to reflect back at you that you can, even when you're faced with, with doubt.

 

Claire  35:57

That's some good advice. For me personally, I am taking out the sisters in the hood. I had never heard about it the first time I heard that, and I like the way it sounds. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, Lucy. So now for the last part of the podcast, what I like to do is get a sneak preview into what type of music you're listening to. Or perhaps what books you're reading. So are you ready for my quick three questions? I am. Question number one. What song are you listening to non stop these days? Or if you don't listen to a lot of music, what book are you reading right now?

 

Lucy  36:35

So that is an easy win. There's a strong candidate there. I actually just discovered about a week ago, the song is called I need you by John Batiste. And why I love that is because I might have indulged in a dance off on a friend's rooftop because I was so excited that this song moved me into action. And I really recommend that people listen to the YouTube video because the music video that goes with it tells a beautiful story, and it's super energetic leaves you feeling inspired. And a great tune to dance to

 

Claire  37:09

Question number two, is there an artist or a band, perhaps even a book that has particularly resonated with you at some point in your life?

 

Lucy  37:20

Yes, I'm again going to use a fairly fresh example. So at the beginning of last year 2020, it was a bit of a rocky period, I was trying to re-establish myself in different ways. There was heartbreak in the mix, there was transferal trauma from working with the refugee community and various other dynamics going on. And a book that I encountered at that time was Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, which in a way is the creative guide to self compassion, amongst many other things, but I found it to be a beautiful read. And there's some activities that I took from that book, which I use to this day, and I think I will use forever.

 

Claire  38:04

Third and last question, what is your all time favourite album, or your all time favourite book that you would absolutely recommend?

 

Lucy  38:13

So the book is, this is what came to my mind instinctively the book is called The Power of One. I read it when I was a young teenager about 13 years old and it had a significant effect on me. I have South African parents but was brought up in the UK and just found this book to be a beautiful emblem of empowerment. And looking into in a way my historic roots also racial challenges that we face in society and how an underdog can triumph or leave hope in ether and it leaves an elusive ending. But in my mind, whether my 13 year old brain is totally accurate. And what I remember of it was incredibly powerful and incredibly symbolic for me.

 

Claire  39:00

So Lucy, we are at the end of the show. I would like to really thank you so much for taking the time to join me today and have this wonderful conversation. Before I let you go, I'd like to leave you the last word. If there's anything you'd like to add, the floor is yours.

 

Lucy  39:18

I will leave you with one of our favourite mantras of our community which Claire I think you're embodying at this moment in time with your podcast and that is "courage is contagious". So I just say to everybody listening go get out there if you're courageous it can become contagious and we can contagious the whole world with beautiful impact oriented actions let's let's go make some make some things happen.

 

Claire  39:42

Well on that great note. Thanks again Lucy.

 

Lucy  39:45

Thank you so much Claire.

 

Claire  39:53

That was episode 10. A Conversation with Lucy Antrobus Lucy is such an inspirational power house with a great ambition to uplift communities across continents. In case you wish to learn more about Refugee Voices, you will find the link to their website in the show notes. You will also find the link to the podcast page for the additional references from our discussion. Thank you so much for tuning in today and listening to this new episode. I appreciate you taking the time. Don't forget to follow us on social media either Linked in, Instagram or Twitter to get your timely updates. Tune in on April 19 For the last episode of this season. Until then, take care of yourself stay well and stay inspired