Henry Dieudonné-Demaria has spent much of his career working on the climate and environment emergencies, with a particular interest in finding new ways of empowering people to play a full part in shaping the climate and development responses that affect them.
In this context, Henry is inspired by the Mandala Trust’s collaborative and community-led approach to improving lives. He writes: `More than ever, we need ways of development that start from the ground up and put people first. The Mandala Trust, in basing its work around lived values of solidarity, equity and partnership, offers a powerful role model for collaboration between the global South and North. It is an honour and a privilege to support the work of the Trust.’
Henry has spent time volunteering with rough sleepers and refugee communities, with people receiving end of life care, and with local environment and climate projects. He currently lives in the Yorkshire Pennines with his family.
Pam Sutherland is the current Treasurer of the Trust. She is a qualified Chartered Management Accountant, and has an MBA awarded by the Said Business School, University of Oxford. She worked in a variety of finance, project management and technology positions within the charitable sector, culminating in her role as the first CIO at Oxford University Press, until her retirement in 2015.
Pam’s main interests include voluntary work, Insight meditation, and climate activism. She sees the Mandala Trust and its ethos of global compassion and simple kindness as a necessary counterbalance to a world increasingly driven by commercialism and division.
Kathryn Tulip is a trainer/facilitator who works with a wide range of grassroots groups and organisations working towards social and environmental justice. She has been involved in campaigning and action on a number of issues over the past 30 years, including: solidarity work with oppressed peoples in Central America and Palestine; anti-militarisation and anti-war campaigning; and environmental action including on road building, forest protection, food and farming and climate change.
To help her stay energised and resilient she loves to be in nature, to grow things, to hang out with friends and to practise Insight meditation. She was drawn to work with the Mandala Trust by its commitment to work with small grassroots projects, supporting them with small amounts of money, to create sustainable and effective projects that meet the needs of children and young people.
Kathryn is inspired by the ways in which the trust operates, incorporating the values of generosity, kindness and compassion into its internal processes and the way in which it works with the groups it supports.
Brigid Avison is a trained mindfulness teacher, now semi-retired after running courses for nearly a decade. She previously worked as a dyslexia support tutor for students studying at degree level in Oxford and, before that, as a non-fiction book editor and writer. She has been practising Insight meditation for many years, and helps to run one-day retreats in Oxfordshire. Her other sources of joy include trees and streams, gazing, meeting friends, reading poetry, witnessing kindness and generosity, and her husband David.
Brigid writes: `For me, the Mandala Trust embodies so much of what I value in the human spirit – our wonderful capacity to feel our common humanity, to see beyond our social and cultural identities, to witness and rejoice in others’ creative responses to the challenges faced by their communities. Being part of the enabling of those responses – sharing the energy of kindness and generosity – lifts my heart.’
