Camila Batmanghelidjh
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2006
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the children's campaigner Camila Batmanghelidjh. Camila Batmanghelidjh has devoted her life to the kind of children most people would cross the street to avoid - youngsters who are often violent, don't go to school and who are unfamiliar with a stable family life. More than a decade ago she took over a run of disused railway arches in South London to set up a centre offering food, advice, education and counselling. Now her outreach projects serve more than 11,000 children each year and, such is her success, she's feted by celebrities and courted by politicians.
The product of a wealthy Iranian family herself, she decided early on that her vocation lay in working with children and that this was a task she could not combine with motherhood. Last week she was named Woman of the Year in recognition of her ground-breaking work.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Redemption Song by Bob Marley Book: Being and Nothingness by Jean Paul Sartre Luxury: A yoyo
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 2006. My cast away this week has dedicated her life to the children that most of us would cross the street to avoid. |
| 0:34.0 | She is Camilla Bapangelich. |
| 0:37.0 | The children she works with are the stuff of newspaper headlines, |
| 0:40.0 | feral teenagers who don't go to school, run drugs, and don't know a stable family life. |
| 0:46.0 | The product of a privileged background herself, she decided early on to set aside her own sorts of motherhood |
| 0:52.0 | and devote her life to those she calls |
| 0:55.1 | urban child warriors. Today the project she set up in disused railway arches in South London |
| 1:01.9 | has spread to help around 11,000 young people every year. |
| 1:06.8 | Such is her notoriety that she's fettered by celebrities, courted by politicians, and visited |
| 1:12.3 | by Prince Charles, who was reputedly moved to tears by what he saw. |
| 1:17.0 | Camilla, let's be clear the people who are actively welcomed through your doors are the ones that most of us would be terrified of even encountering? |
| 1:24.4 | Yes, possibly because I think they can be quite frightening, they can be quite dangerous, |
| 1:31.2 | they can harm people, you know I can understand why people would be |
| 1:35.4 | frightened of them. I love those children very much but I'm fully aware of the fact that when they |
| 1:42.2 | first arrived they can be very dangerous. |
| 1:45.0 | So we take precautions in case they lose it. |
| 1:49.5 | And when a child walks through your doors, what is it they want? What is it they need? They need what |
| 1:56.7 | every child needs. They need loving care. They need nurture. They need somewhere safe to stay. And this is the thing. I think often people forget the humanity of these children. And typical arrival is maybe a 13 year old boy. |
| 2:13.0 | He's been run by drug dealers, |
| 2:15.0 | curearing drugs. |
... |
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