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Written by Rachel Bentley OBE

February 5th, 2024

This article takes 6 min to read

First Spark - Anita Roddick and Children on the Edge

We take a look back at our history and what sparked the late Dame Anita Roddick and her company, The Body Shop to co-found Children on the Edge in 1990. 

Rachel Bentley, our CEO talks about Anita in those early days, describing how The Body Shop and Children on the Edge are still working to create brighter futures for children around the world to this day.

THE BEGINNINGS IN ROMANIA

The late Dame Anita Roddick was a businesswoman, human rights activist and environmental campaigner and probably best known as the founder of The Body Shop, in 1976. Together, we co-founded Children on the Edge in the early 1990’s. 

Shocked by the images of starved, shaven-headed orphans that dominated the headlines after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist government in 1990, Anita decided to travel to Romania to see the situation for herself. 

On her first visit to a Romanian orphanage, she was horrified to see scores of listless toddlers in cold, dark rooms that stank of urine. These children were caged in cots, day and night, and deprived of all human contact except when they were fed through the bars. This network of ‘child gulags’ was exposed, where an estimated 170,000 abandoned infants, children, and teens were being raised. 

Anita quickly mobilised her company - The Body Shop, to send supplies and a small group of volunteers, to help three orphanages in the remote village of Halaucesti. At the time, I was a 23-year-old law graduate, and was one of these volunteers.

Together, we sparked the response that created Children on the Edge, which exists to this day to support some of the most marginalised children around the world.

I owe my whole humanitarian career to Anita Roddick’s faith in me as a young woman. I got to know her pretty well, sleeping alongside her on the floor of a clinic in Romania. I’ll never forget what we found when we first arrived there. I remember the smell, the thick swarms of flies everywhere. Quiet and emaciated, children were lying in their own excrement for days and fed through the bars of the cots. They weren’t even touched.

CHANGING THE SYSTEM TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Once the initial response in Romania was complete, I knew that the solution needed to be longer term. After the team had left, Anita asked my opinion on how the trip had gone. I said: “If The Body Shop is really serious, they’ll make a 5-year commitment in Romania and do it properly."  

To her surprise, the next day Anita said, "OK let’s do it. If you think it takes 5 years, then let’s do it.’"​

Suddenly there I was, a 23 year old, working in a small team with Anita’s daughters, helping to lead an international humanitarian project. 

A YOUNG RACHEL BENTLEY IN ROMANIA

Within five years, our work had led to the closure of those dreadful institutions. We were young and stupid enough to think we could change the childcare system in Romania. Anita believed we could. And we did.

CHILDREN ON THE EDGE WAS BORN

By 1992, we set up ‘Children on the Edge’ in an official capacity, together with The Body Shop. By this time, we had developed considerable expertise in working with institutionalised children, successfully integrating around 4,000 back into the society that had rejected them and creating brighter futures.

The charity grew, and we continued to apply what Anita had taught us: to trust your gut and always listen to people on the ground, who know the culture and understand the needs of their own people best. 

Anita continued to guide and encourage me. She knew that when you are young you have the energy and the ideas. At a time when I wasn’t being listened to, Anita listened. She would use her influence to ensure I was taken seriously by decision makers.

For example, when at a refugee camp I became frustrated when the bigger aid agencies were discussing building shower blocks, and the conversations were going nowhere. I had suggested providing mobile showers, so we could meet the needs of refugees flexibly, but I was laughed out of the room. 

A week later Anita showed up and I told her about my shower idea, she immediately put it forward. People listened to her, and within 3 weeks we had them manufactured.

LEADING WITH THE SAME SPARK TODAY

Over 30 years later, I strive to lead Children on the Edge with the same spark Anita began it with, and The Body Shop has been a faithful pillar of support for over 30 years. 

At Children on the Edge young people's voices are at the centre of everything we do. The young people we meet on the ground in every country we work in are so often the ones with the best ideas for what needs to change. They must never be overlooked. 

​Today, we continue to adapt and respond, always working on the “edge” for a world where every child can thrive, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, caste or geography. The 'edge' in 1990 was the institutionalisation of children in Romania, and today, the 'edge' is refugee children; stripped of their rights to education, and denied their chances of a brighter future. 

Education breaks ongoing cycles of displacement and poverty, and the classroom creates a place where hope can begin, and children can start to flourish. 

We now provide education for thousands of refugee children who have fled persecution, conflict or violence. Our award-winning programmes use innovative ways to enable access to education, working alongside local communities to find the best possible solutions.

We train refugee teachers so that children can learn in their own dialect, from familiar, trusted adults that understand them and our classrooms are fun and colourful environments where children are safe and can learn to express themselves.

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