Poverty Global Hero - Pat Capponi
Agricultural Global Hero - Vandana Shiva
Poverty Global Hero - Pat Capponi
There are the words that came to mind when Pat Capponi was sent to a decrepit, poverty-stricken boarding house after release from a hospital psychiatric ward. Pat had just moved to Toronto from Montreal, where she had recently separated from her husband. She left behind a career as a group home manager to start life anew it Toronto. But jobless, depressed, and haunted by memories of a bleak childhood, Pat soon found herself not only living in poverty but, after a brief stint in the hospital, sentenced to live in a boarding house for people with mental illnesses.
Bad Beginnings
Pat grew up with an abusive father. She describes her early childhood: Beatings were the most consistent feature of our lives. There were beatings for not learning to walk fast enough, beatings for crying in a crib, beatings for not eating enough or eating too much. Beatings for poor grades, a broken dish, and unmade bed… Beatings always accompanied by a verbal violence even more brutal. Pat finally got away from her father when she was 18 but she maintained an abusive lifestyle through daily drugs and drinking. It would take years-including the three Pat spent at the boarding house-for Pat to begin to live a life that was healthier than her childhood. In the place of self-abuse, Pat began to focus her energy on changing things around her for the better.
Taking Action
Following the three years she spent in the boarding house, Pat led a campaign which eventually brought the Ontario Minister of Health on a tour of the boarding house. This led to one of Pat's first major successes as a social activist: The boarding house, which profited from housing mentally ill people, was closed, and a new non-profit housing project was built. Today, Pat Capponi is one of Canada's leading mental health care advocates. As a former patient herself, Pat continues to advocate for mentally ill people having more of a say in how they are housed and treated.
Pat is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including Upstairs in the Crazy House, which tells the story of Pat's three years in the boarding house, and Dispatches from the Poverty Line.
Agricultural Global Hero - Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva-Sowing the Seeds of Self-Reliance
If you ask Vandana Shiva why she gave up a career as a quantum physicist, she'll probably tell you about her childhood. Shiva grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas in Northern India. She often got to ride through the Himalayan forests with her father, who was a forest official. Since earning a Ph.D in physics from the University of Waterloo, Shiva has been a teacher, a farmer, an ecologist and the author of eleven books. In spite of her academic success, Shiva never lost the desire to return to the place where she grew up. Today, Shiva lives in the foothills of the Himalayas, where she is involved in various projects.
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Vandana Shiva helped to found Navdanya, an organisation in India that provides farmers with an alternative approach to modern farming. Navdanya, which means Nine Seeds, helps farmers to produce hardy native crops that can be grown organically with natural fertilizer and no chemicals. Navdanya works with local farmers, showing them organic farming techniques and teaching them how to become self-sufficient.
Farmer Darwan Singh Negi, who switched to organic farming with Navdanya's help five years ago, grows six types of rice on his three-acre farm. His farm's productivity is similar to that of his neighbours' non-organic farms, but he spends almost 70% less on fertilizers, pesticides and seeds.
Navdanya promotes crop diversity-the planting of many varieties of grain-instead of the monoculture approach used by industrial farms. Vandana Shiva believes that commercial farming techniques are based on a flawed philosophy.
Agribusinesses use smart technologies, which claim to prevent bees from usurping pollen, and to keep weeds from stealing the sunshine. In an effort to increase output, farms use pesticides, chemical fertilizers and genetically modified crops. Shiva says that this approach to agriculture is based a worldview of scarcity-an assumption that nature does not provide enough.
In India, small farmers have a different approach to agriculture. Shiva describes women who weave beautiful designs of paddy (rice) to hang up for birds when they do not find enough in the fields. Shiva explains the Indian farmer's philosophy towards nature: For the farmer, the field is the mother; worshipping the field is a sign of gratitude towards the Earth, which, as mother feeds the millions of life forms that are her children.
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