 remaining however that we have just it's my great pleasure for all of you who are here and who will be listening to this at the later stage because of course going to the conditions at the universities now many people will not be able to access this from their offices. I would like to welcome David for this very interesting talk which is taking us actually into the present which is a little bit different from many of the other historical topics but the important thing is that this is a living project and the what we can learn out of this is applicable also to other projects and Romina you will later probably be saying something about yours as well. To the person of David Sorter, he's also quite untypical because he's actually from a completely different background so not a trained theologian as far as I know and so you know he has a background in the sciences and technology so it's a real life real world person and yet he's got a deep insight into both the ancient culture and the contemporary setting in which Muslims and Christians and a few remaining Jews also live side by side. So, without wanting to say much more I would like to pass the word to David, and this is being recorded so everything that you say can be held against me so it's the yes. Thank you very much indeed Lars. It's very kind of you to give me this opportunity, especially in such difficult circumstances so I feel greatly honoured to be able to give a talk at SOAS. As you mentioned, I have interests that are fairly broad and I hope what I say will be of interest to everyone able to take part now. And perhaps, I believe you're recording this, as you said, then there will be others in the future who could perhaps find something interesting as well. I'm going to attempt to share a screen and run us through a series of slides, which are in theory to take about 45 minutes. I will control the timing of each slide, so I can speed up or slow down if we're a little bit over the intended time, but I believe we have until at least two o'clock, possibly a little bit later. So hopefully, given that I slimmed down the various slides, there shouldn't be a problem. So bear with me please, because I'm not only other potential problems with the internet connection and zoom, but I'm not hugely experienced in dealing with this sort of screen sharing technology so forgive me if we need a couple of goes, but I will begin. And fingers crossed. Here we go. So I need to get rid of this. Can you just get rid of that? Okay. I hope you're able to see that adequately. Is that okay? Can anyone here? I hope anyone? That's great. That's very reassuring. Thank you. So that's the title as everyone I guess you will. I put up an abstract here, which I hope many people have had a chance to see beforehand, but this is a brief overview. The focus of the talk really is, I hope, that it's going to be an encouragement to people to have a go. So resources are always limited, as we know, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't make a beginning, even if you have to use your own money, which is what I've been doing. You can do something. So I think there's something that can be done, even with limited resources, can be encouraging to people and can achieve synergy. So what I'm going to do is run through a bit of the background as to how I became involved with this, and then go into some particular examples, which, as Lars kindly said, are still developing. So, yeah, I've still got stuff at the top of the screen here, but I hope you can see what I'm sharing. It is dear to my heart, and not least because it has a very, very long cultural history, going back at least 7,000 years. If you care to, you can make that a good deal longer still. But it's history that's been fascinating to me ever since I was a boy really. And it made me want to study ancient history at university. But my Latin was not good enough. And I ended up as a scientist. But I've been studying Egyptology and Egypt in all its forms for many, many years. So amongst the things I did was to teach myself hieroglyphs, and I translated the texts on a late period coffin in Plymouth City Museum, which had been there for 90 years. And so I was able to find out who this person was. He was a well priest, sort of cleansing priest. And I found out his parents and all sorts of other things. And the translation was checked by a proper Egyptologist and then published by the museum. So I only mentioned that just to give a bit of street cred to my claims to, to know and love Egypt. Okay. Now, I've got a strange background as you may have seen from the speaker bio besides being a scientist. I've got a degree in moral philosophy, and I've dabbled quite a lot in anthropology so I'd like to think I have a background in cultural history as well as pure sciences. And, of course, as so many others have, I just went to Egypt initially as a tourist and found, you know, many, many things of interest because I was able to, to see hieroglyphs in situ. But I came back. One of the key things I believe is that in ancient times, Egypt was known as the two lands, Tawi, Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. If you may be able to see my cursor. This is, is Lower Egypt, the Delta region, and Upper Egypt, because we're looking south here. And this is the way the ancient Egyptians looked at things from the great green as they call it the sea here the Mediterranean back up into the Nile Valley. So this is the Faiyum if people know Egypt and Cairo is around about here. There are still rich people on poor people, Muslims and Christians, employed and unemployed. And what you see if you're a tourist, and what you see if you're not a tourist. So what I like to do is try to show what's going on in so far as I've been able to see it in what I call the real Egypt, what I've been doing voluntary work with various communities in Egypt, different places across Egypt in fact, since 2013. And I believe maybe not my place to say but I believe these links can be inspirational I've certainly found them inspiring. And I know at least a number of Egyptians who are very happy with them as well. But the point of these particular partnerships is that they were set up with the view to being a two way partnership genuinely two way, because I think each of the two sides of the partnership can inspire and assist in significant ways, the other side of the partnership. So just a bit of background here, forgive me that I'm going to be delving into some unpleasantnesses, but those form a necessary introduction I think because they're the background to how all this developed. So, Egypt was a Christian country for hundreds of years until the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD 21 AH that's roughly the day. And after that time, both faith communities more or less were able to live together peacefully. And in the 20th century, particularly there was a great change in economic conditions. Rapid population growth, extra economic stresses, the change in the flooding of the Nile and many other things, all of which led to interfaith tensions. Interfaith discrimination is against Egyptian law. And everyone I hope would wish that that any predator should be overcome, and peace should be restored. Sadly, it hasn't always been possible to maintain peace. And I'd like to show you a few of the difficulties. We will move on to some more positive things soon. In 2013, there were media reports of civil unrest, interfaith violence all across Egypt. Some people watching this seminar today might remember that huge street protests. And there were sit-ins to to protest at the departure of President Mossy. And one of the main sit-ins was at Rabah al-Adawiyah Mosque in Cairo. And the protesters refused to leave. And the army were adamant that they had to leave and forcibly disperse them. And many hundreds of people were killed, which clearly is very, very bad. That created huge, huge upheaval. And some of the people who are maybe amongst the more extreme elements of those pro-Morsy supporters encourage revenge attacks, not against the army, because it's pretty difficult to attack the army, frankly. So they attack Christians who, for some reason, were viewed as being supporters of the army. And they were certainly very much easier targets. Christians themselves say that they form nearly 20% of the population in Egypt. Far, far more than the official figure used by the media, which is normally about 10%. Very, very rare for any medium to admit to there being more than 10%. But it's a sizable minority, I should say, whatever figures actually used. The overwhelming majority of the Christian population are Coptic Orthodox. And that church was founded, they say, by Saint Mark in about 43 AD. And I find that very interesting because they faithfully preserved what is still possible to preserve of ancient Egyptian culture. Large chunks of the language, the last stages of ancient Egyptian, and indeed music, which I haven't mentioned on this slide. So it's a fascinating preservation of an ancient culture, I think, mixed in with some Koini Greek for the current Coptic language. So in 2013, because of these, what I'm calling revenge attacks that may be an unfair description but certainly was huge civil unrest. The cops really suffered very badly. I've mentioned those in the other way mosque they obviously suffered very badly too. In terms of the Christian damage, I've listed here all sorts of figures outlining the damage that was done. It was significant. It was reported to some extent in the media in the West. I mean Al Jazeera, France 24, a few other channels gave more coverage to it than BBC and other TV stations did, but it was pretty bad. And the attacks did not end simply on the 14th of August they carried on for weeks. So I haven't gone into the detail here but in my background, I've got quite some experience of burnt out churches and religious buildings, both in Britain and in Germany, because I've lived in both places. And I felt for these poor folk who had the places of worship destroyed. And I thought, was there anything we could do. And it occurred to me that in England, at least, we tend to have quite a lot of material assets are not in my experience very much community spirit. Whereas in so far as I've become able to find out about people in Egypt, they do seem to me to have a lot of community spirit, even if they're pretty poor as many are sadly so I thought we could bring the two sides together in a synergistic partnership. And it would help everybody. That's including us here as well. So I decided to collect some gifts, and instead of sort of putting them in an envelope and sending them off to somebody in what I call a big class tower. I was advised and it seemed to me sensible to buy myself a flight to Egypt and just find out on the ground where the need was greatest. And so I took leave of my family, wife, three children and the day job. Even though it was quite considerably dangerous in fact at the time, and foreigners were advised not to travel. So the first stop was at Mark's Cathedral in Cairo, the equivalent of Saint Peter's at the Vatican in Rome, and I had to get through two tanks and three sets of steel gates. And frankly, despite all that security. Three years later, there was a terror attack inside that compound, which killed many, many people so despite all that security. It wasn't secure. This is where the head of the Coptic Church is only this pope to address was living at the time he now has another place to live in as well. He lived here for six hours until one of the people officials came up to me and said, you know, who are you chum basically strange foreign person. But it was kind of them and I was really, really grateful that they took notice of me and listened. And I guess partly because it was so unusual for a foreigner to be doing this. He wanted to meet his holiness himself that very evening in a private audience. So here I am with his holiness in October of 2013. And he's very welcoming, and we had a good opportunity I had a good opportunity to outline to him what I was proposing, and he very kindly said he would certainly help. As I said in this slide here, I wanted it to be not one way charity, which, you know, often has been perhaps the case for Europeans dealing with people who are in other countries, but a genuine two way partnership. I'm sure it's holiness was able to see that I genuinely was interested in Egypt and wanted to help if I possibly could. And he said that we were the, that I was in a sense, you know, the first representation to suggest this sort of approach, which frankly surprises me but then, you know, maybe I shouldn't contradict what he was saying. Anyway, he said his bishops would help me to visit areas of British need. So, no, I, I'm having a handshake. Because I'm not, I'm not a, a Coptic Christian or Orthodox Christian, you know, I'm not used to kissing hands or anything so we just had a handshake. Over the next two weeks, I traveled to very dangerous places, not just in Cairo, but all across Egypt, basically. Some of the worst areas, Minya, so hard, so hard, Delga, Western desert, and I was able to talk to people who were banned to diplomats and clergy and even journalists, because of the difficulty of the circumstances, even the Middle East correspondent for the BBC, who was then order Gary, who, as you probably will have seen, you know, visits all sorts dangerous places for her reports was not allowed to visit the places I did so it was a, it was a great privilege, it was a great privilege, frankly, all made possible by Pope de Rodros. This is just a little joke slide I put in when I give talks just to show people. There are many things to see in Egypt, which we don't see in England, or anywhere in Europe, frankly, visit Camels, going off to probably an unpleasant fate, sadly for them. And again, you know, with our cities here we used to probably more splendid conditions than can be found even in some of the better streets in Alexandria, this is Egypt's second city. And people collect their groceries in baskets, drop down on roots. Not always, but they do sometimes. So this is just an idea of a typical street in the sizeable Egyptian city. Amongst other places I heard this, I went to Soha, which is a city of about a quarter of a million in sort of what you might call Middle Egypt, which is strictly part of our project. It's on the way down towards Luxor. And Bishop Bacchon was attacked in his own cathedral by a terrorist who'd broken in using heavy butane gas cylinders to batter down the door. And then they throw in these cylinders and of course they explode like giant grenades. I got film of this attack actually which the Bishop gave me. I'm going to include that in this presentation, but it's fairly frightening. And he is a very brave man. He challenged these people and lived to tell the tale. Here's some of the defacements on the wall. Pretty unpleasant and disrespectful, but then I guess, you know, you're willing to break into a place of worship and set fire to it. A few graffiti don't seem to matter. This is a burnt out interior crunched around on, you know, all sorts of stuff to take that picture places outside. You get the idea. This is for the team of saw us who is having to carry on his pastoral work while there was a literacy class going on in what was usable of that building is another building in Minya. Again, Middle Egypt, another city of about a quarter of a million. The university there and today. Very badly damaged. And this is a boomer Victor father Victor, who I will always remember insisted on making me a cup of tea. I mean, you know, almost made me we so so welcoming so friendly and so keen that people should know about the difficulties. Because they're condemning anyone but but just to say look, you know, we are carrying on this this will not stop what we do is on the roof. You can see some of the damage. And in the worst in most difficult areas I wasn't always protected by anybody at all frankly, but in the worst areas I had a convoy of seven police vehicles and 30 armed guards, just for me. So I felt like you know the visiting president of a foreign state or something because it was this huge convoy. And in the worst place delga delger in the local dialect. The army had needed three weeks to recapture this village basically from a mob of 3000 extremists. And there's still an arm of personnel carrier and a tank there when we left. There's, you know, a couple of people guarding me, some of the police Jeep things. Here's some of senior officers the man on my left is a police general. I think he was surprised to find a foreign man there. And he said, you know, do you like Egypt do you think it's beautiful still so I say, I work up. You know, it is. Yes, despite the difficulties. This is another guard, looking out of a burnt church building to protect and speed up through a few of these but this was particularly upsetting because there's a chapel there. This is St. Mary's fourth century that makes it a good deal older than our Lindisfarne up in the northeast of England, which is sort of a national treasure. This this chapel for century was destroyed by the mob I told you about the 3000 extremists. They occupied it for three weeks, and they dug up the floor of the chapel, as well as doing all the other damage you can see in the picture to find the bones of the guardian monks who've been there in the past, hoping to find gold rings, which, of course, you know, they didn't because optic monks don't wear gold rings especially not those who might be guarding a chapel hundreds of years ago. This is the way out of Delga, and the chap in the white top is my Muslim driver, Mohammed. It was very nice actually helpful as was everyone. And here's an armor personnel carry on the way out. Things will get more positive in this presentation quite soon. Don't bear with me don't don't don't despair. I have a very background. Just as I arrived in Egypt for that first trip. The newspapers were full of the story of a shooting at a wedding in the poor Cairo district of Iraq. And the worst tragedy of this was the killing of a little girl called Mariam to just eight. She was a Muslim family and Muslim guest as well. Here she is. It's still upsetting me a lot because I have three daughters myself and my youngest daughter was just 12 at the time so particularly sensitive to it. Little Mariam was killed by 13 bullets. Also three Muslim guests were wounded as well. One of them died from his wounds. Yeah, so that speaks for itself. Yeah, it was absolutely shocking. And I was due to attend a Coptic wedding myself just a few days later in Alexandria. So it was on a terrorist hit list. But after discussion with the family, they were determined, I was amazed that they were determined to go ahead. They said, you know, as everyone said, we have to go on, we mustn't allow this to stop us. Thanks along the Corniche, the sea front in Alexandria at the time to say there was a curfew. And I filmed, I took this photograph, but I also filmed it at four o'clock in the morning. Rumbling along. So as I say, the celebration went ahead. I also visited the Western desert in a monastery called Saint Samuel the Confessor. And the abbot there, Bishop Azulios, said, you know, why do people hate like this? Why kill an innocent child 13 times? We must carry on loving, you know, even if people shoot, it's basically what he was saying. And that later became the sort of the title of a film that I cobbled together from pictures and video that I take and during my journey, which I made because no one else, no one else had had the privilege to see this. That first visit I've traveled 20 kilometers across open desert, basically, a desert track in the dark and in the daytime. But the first time was in the dark. And it's a very dangerous journey because there've now been two massacres of pilgrims as I've called them here on their way to Saint Samuel's using that same desert track, which I know well. The first was in May 2017, the second in November, 2080, when I was actually in Egypt and, you know, I know the people that I know the monastery, I know the track. It's very upsetting and security is really not adequate. Yeah, so this is just a note that some Muslims who are of an extremist persuasion, take certain verses in the Quran. Very literally and very aggressively, rather than other verses which say that those they were called Demis, such as Christians should be allowed to live as subordinates. And something called the jizya tax for state protection wouldn't go into that. That's not desperately relevant to our talk today. But, but you know, there are crazy people, unfortunately, probably in all faiths, but the ones to be worried about in Egypt are these Islamists. We need to work for peaceful partnerships. So this is just talking about the film that I made, I made a one hour film, never made a film before, called No Need to Hate, taking this title from Bishop Basilios. And I was invited to show this at Westminster to members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, because as I say this was unique footage. I made 70 copies on DVD, which I gave out to parliamentarians and many other people. I then went back to Egypt and gave out copies of the DVD to various people, especially of course is Holiness Pope Diwajros, who made it all possible. And here I am giving him the DVD, sharing my report with him. He did very friendly, very welcoming, very, very, you know, could not have done more so I'm deeply grateful to Pope Diwajros. I even told him a few funny stories and we had a laugh together. He has a good sense of humor. And this time you can see my handshake is even warmer. Onto the more positive stuff. So in 2016, because I had contacts now all over Egypt, I was invited to stay in a mud-brick village with a Coptic family in Upper Egypt. And Upper Egypt includes cities like Minya and so hard, as I mentioned, and it's the area where there's the highest portion of the minority Christians. So it's a good place to find out where interfaith tensions can be can be addressed. And I was hosted by a family who sell herbs and stuff from a tiny little shop with everything in sacks. It's very interesting to stay in a village. I've seen the village to a number of years now and it's changing, but back at that time, five years ago, there were a few means of very few people had had anything to travel with so you would walk. Some people had motorbikes. I think there's one car. Here I am in the village. Behind me one of the mud-brick houses not not the one I stayed in a mud-brick house. Here's my host, Ramani, meets very, very expensive. It's actually more expensive in Egypt now than it is in England, even though average incomes are much lower. So then in 2016 and indeed now I think a lot of people have to rely upon bread and beans, which is a very ancient Egyptian diet. And herbs are used instead of pharmaceutical products produced, in fact, because herbs are much cheaper. So, again, part of a village street, this is what we call Tesco's. It isn't Tesco's, of course, but it gives you an idea of a village convenience store open until very, very, very late. Mud-brick house again, I've mentioned that before. Very crumbly. This is a better part of the village, but still you can see the drains aren't great, even though this particular group of housing has an air conditioning unit. And you need that in the summer because the temperatures grow up to the high 40s Celsius is really, really hot. This is admittedly one of the worst houses I came across, but you see, you know, it's extremely crumbly. And the roof, in fact, the whole construction is pretty similar to what would have been used by the ancient Egyptians. I mentioned this briefly, these metal drainage covers for manholes get stolen and then people stumbling along or walking along at night fall down the hole and some people die. So you have to be careful. If the lighting is not great, there's also scorpions and things, but open drain covers are dangerous. So I wrote a report about the village and one of the people interested in it, I knew, would be as well as Prince Charles, who's very interested in community development and interventions and all sorts of things which what I've been able to see might be able to inform. So I was invited to write a report for him and I sent it to Clarence House where he lives. And he very kindly wrote back to me and said, you know, thank you for the report. And that he was going to be giving or that he already in fact had given that took a long time to get to Egypt. And he had put in train the giving of quite substantial donations to some of the places I visited, which I will tell you about in a moment. So that's, that's a good result. And this is my fourth meeting with his Holiness as I met him twice in Cairo, as described, I also met in the third time briefly in Luxor in 2016 this my fourth meeting with him when he came to England. And he remembered the previous meetings. So, you know, that's off to put to our jobs is a great man. Moving from the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church to the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. He's the head of something like 85 million Christians. And he's based at Lambeth Palace in London. He has something called the reconciliation team, which tries to assist understanding and improve relationships between faith groups throughout the world. So I, I started to visit Lambeth Palace and work with this team, again to assist in whatever way I could with improving situations. But there are several monasteries within a few miles of the village that I stayed in. And I mentioned monasteries not because I'm a monk obviously I'm not a monk, but because they just seem to be centers of community improvement. As they might have been in Britain in the Middle Ages, but for all the problems that monasteries had in the Middle Ages, you will know more than I am sure but but you know they also did some good. And the ones in Egypt still are doing some good, I believe, as I was able to see. And they benefit all the people in the local communities. So I think it's a good thing for the Muslims as well as Christians. And that assists, you know, general community relations as well. So, first, I'd like to talk about an agricultural improvement project at the monastery of St. Pachomius or in Egyptian and Baham, which is led by an abbot called Silvanus. Ashaia on the northeastern landscape to look so. I met Father Ashaia and British trained veterinary staff who look after all sorts of animals, cattle and water buffalo ducks and bees I've mentioned here that there's all sorts there. To improve the agricultural skills of the local community to grow produce to generally raise, raise economic benefit locally. And they also teach metal working. Here's a label from the, from the honey pots that they issue the honey farm, as they call it. The apiary of the monastery of St. Pachomius. It's quite nice honey. And, and the good thing is the bees don't seem to be affected by bee problems that we have here. This is me with with Dr. David Sariris who's a vet and Father Ashaia. It's a water buffalo. I think they're very significant as I'll come on to mention. We're not used to seeing them in England, but they're very significant. And he's a trainee. I think the cultural worker learning to work with cattle. Because of the partnership and largely I think the money from Prince Charles, they've been able to buy 15 more water buffalo. And to prove that rather unpleasant looking compound for the herd that's not very nice is it so that's much better now. They've hired and trained more local people to look after these water buffalo. So why water buffalo you say. Well, basically buffalo milk is creamy and nutritious. And I can vouch for that myself. And it's especially beneficial for poor children. So it's good all around basically more water buffalo. The monastery delivers the milk around to the local area and to save on fuel costs. They've now been able to buy a big tank and bury it from which they can draw fuel, having bought it in bulk, which is a bit cheaper. So here I am visiting Father of Shire and Abbot Silwanus again in 2018. I tried to visit again in 2020 just before the pandemic. But I thought Silwanus was was traveling away. So I didn't get to meet him. And very sadly he died in May of last year. So I may have this year from the coronavirus. That's sort of agricultural improvement just continuing. There's also a project about primary education. There's a little primary school which is one of the community improvement projects run by a much smaller monastery called monastery of the saints. And that's been run by Abouna Sarabamun. And they teach Arabic, Egyptian Arabic that is Coptic, religious studies, maths, good citizenship and a little tiny bit of English to help the children's employment prospects. These children are very poor. And it's not at all guaranteed that they would get any education, frankly, apart from what they get from this little school. Some would, but many wouldn't. They too, I mean, this has been in a way more of a focus than the agricultural project. But through money, it's been possible to raise and general, you know, goodwill. They doubled the number of children they now have there to 180 taught by 20 local women, I've said, actually there are a few men as well. And most of them don't receive any money at all. And a few get, you know, a pittance basically, but they're happy to try to help. And the teaching environment has been refurbished and extended as well through this partnership. They've also been able to hire a third mini bus, which is great. And they've also opened reopened the woodworking shop because they train people in all sorts of things, not just basic carpentry but market tree and cabinet making and all sorts of stuff, which is highly skilled. And there's a metal working shop as well. And above that, there's a chicken farm, which has been expanded from 2000 hands to 5000. And four more young people have been given work. They have quite high levels of education, but there aren't necessarily jobs available in the area. And this is very, you know, very good for the local employment. So in 2018, I had the idea of joining up this little school in Egypt with a little school here in my home city of Plymouth, which is run by the Church of England. And that school was keen to or had been keen to have me in to talk about children in Egypt because part of the curriculum for primary children is to learn about children in other countries. So, you know, I've had this experience of meeting children and other people too, of course, in Egypt. So I went in and gave talks about, you know, food in Egypt and all sorts of things. And we came up with the idea of making friends. I came up with the idea of making friends between the two schools, so that children in both places could make friends with children of their own age in the other country, in various language constraints and all other difficulties permitted. So what I did was I made a giant sort of tabletop size a zero bilingual welcome poster which you see here in English and Arabic for the children in Britain to send to the children in Egypt. They as individual children made little a four posters about their own interests. So to the teachers held up the big poster in the playground as you see, you see the size of it. And I, I took a copy of this picture with the children the teachers and the big poster that picture took a copy of that to Egypt with the big with the big poster. And the little a for many posters. Mr. Hakeem Zaki, who is the carpenter at Gidecine, put this in a nice frame and put it on the wall at Gidecine. And here's some of the little mini posters that came from Plymouth. There were lots of like 20 or 30 or something. And all of them went on another board in front of which Father Sarabhaman is standing in the corridor of the newly refurbished teaching area. So this is like the grand unveiling. I decided to stand in front of this and scribble a sort of thing at the top of the poster saying, you know, welcome again. And everyone was very happy. I was there for five days on that occasion and saw children arrive early on in the morning and they leave again at midday because it gets pretty hot. Traveling these many glasses. And on two of the days I went out with the children to see some of the places they live in. So here, just a few pictures of Egyptian villages again in the vicinity. Some of them are pretty crumbly. There are lots more pictures, not all as crumbly as this, but everywhere everyone was, you know, hugely friendly and hospitable, as ever. Lovely, lovely people. So I attempted to give some simple English lessons while I was there as well on a couple of days. One of many pictures. The children already learned two languages. They formally learn Egyptian Arabic and they formally learn Coptic as the language for worship for them. But in addition, you know, they try and learn a few bits of English. They're very young only three years old to eight years old. So this is their third language. And I think that's remarkable. I know that that would be attempted in British schools for children so young to try and teach them three languages. My Arabic is far from brilliant. So that constrained what we were able to do, but at least I was making an attempt. And I also brought some simple English books for children with pictures in and so forth, which I left behind with the teachers to work with. And the children sent back a giant poster from them to the children in Plymouth with many posters from them as well. So we sort of completed the partnership that way initially set it up is the illustrations of that poster. And all of that went on to the wall of the local school in Plymouth. It was BBC television and Radio Devon reported on this because it's the first time apparently that an international and interdenominational primary school partnership has been set up like this. And it spans in as I've said here, thousands of miles, different languages and very different circumstances for the children. But in both places, I think, in fact, I know because I've seen them talking about it. They're all very excited and pleased that they've got these sort of friends in a distant and exotic country, you know, Britain is a distant exotic country if you live in Upper Egypt, and certainly Egypt is exotic and distant if you live in Plymouth. So they're very happy. The Candleby's reconciliation team put up what I call a summary poster. So that's when I was invited to talk about it with the Archbishop of Candleby. And this is the summary poster. So it just sort of as you'd expect it summarizes the whole partnership. But it's gone on since that beginning in 2018. Also, I should say the Archbishop of Candleby is something called the ecclesiastical visitor to Merton College is a sort of Church of England thing. And I was a student at this college in Oxford. And they decided to give some money to the local school, and that has enabled a bit more to be paid to the teachers. And to buy some mats for the children to sit in. And even better, Merton invited me to give a public talk, a one hour lecture in fact, in Oxford in May of 2019. It's a fairly high profile because the previous speakers have been Professor Lord Peter Hennessy is an FBA. Very famous economist at the University of London. And Dr Sanjay, who's the president of the Tibetan government in exile. And then they had me. There were others as well in the series, but it was high profile. And then I was able to take back in January 2020 just before the pandemic kicked in. And some replies from Plymouth children back to the Egyptian children who'd sent them replies to their initial mini posters. And this is for the server one looking at the summary post I mentioned. But again, tragically, for the server moon. So come to coronavirus also in May of this year. We've lost two very dedicated and kindly men who were working for the community good. And of course very, very many more have lost their lives in Egypt through coronavirus. Now finally, I wanted to show you something which is maybe particularly dear to my heart. Craft workshops for learning disabled young people. As I said here all over Egypt, but especially in the poor areas. I've noticed that learning disabled folk seem to be given no useful or interesting occupation. Basically, if your male families and society generally, you know, is willing at least for you to beg and the cops tend not to try to allow that. Sometimes, and if you're female in all communities, you're very much kept at home for protection, which is very boring, of course, and very disheartening and very difficult for all concerned. And it looks so it's the city of the order of half a million people. There's very little, very, very much provision for learning disabled people, young or older. So, in 2019, because I knew some people in Egypt in this situation. I was thinking what on earth could be done, if anything, you know, could we help from this country. And I came up with an idea which I put to some Egyptian friends and they said, ah, figure a lovely idea. I used that name figure a lot as a sort of name for the project. And the idea I had was to set up little workshops for learning disabled people to make small and easy things like like bracelets. I had three doctors as I mentioned before, and I know that many girls at least like to make things like elasticated the bracelets and boys can, you know, maybe make other things like candles or, as I've said here, Egyptian life symbols the and people and people not only enjoyed the process of making these things, but it gives them respect. They know they've done something good, it's not something tangible, they can show to their families and other people and be proud everyone is proud of what's been done. It's better than simply sitting indoors twiddling with us, you know, this is this is positive. So what I did was I bought 500 initially biodegradable allegedly plastic bags, bought thousands of coloured beads and meters of elastic. And then I designed and had printed locally 700 little small bilingual sticky labels, saying vicarahela lovely idea. And made up these signs to display or places where the bracelets would subsequently be sold. So here's an example of a bag with a bracelet and a sticker and the display of a variety of bracelets, different designs, you know, individual people make individual designs. So in our current group, we've got Christians from local churches, we've got Muslims, some Muslims as well from local mosques. And the watchword is everybody is happy as I keep saying everyone is welcome and everyone is happy. As you'll see in a moment. And before the pandemic, we already had young people who are deaf, people who are dumb, deaf and dumb, down syndrome people. I think a phallic sense people with inadequate brain development and those with other disabilities. This is one of our first sessions. Okay, so this is a little girl called Mario, I believe. As you can see, she's wearing a hearing aid. She's quite severely deaf. She was one of the people taking part in our first session. He's a bit of film about doing her a particular bracelet. The people that could choose what beads they wanted to use and make their own design. And she's very happy, as I keep saying. These are two sisters. The girl in the black there is called Irene. And the one in the furry top is Marina. And they both have problems just that the brain development was not as might have been hoped. So they are learning disabled. But you'll see them taking part in our session here. Okay, and here's some more people on the sign on the table that I mentioned before. Which is used elsewhere too. This girl is dumb. Marina again. This girl has downs. And there's a sort of group photo. Big smiles. And the families are very happy too. This, this was followed by a wonderful, I think encouragement because in Luxor, where this session was held, there's an enormous temple, Karnak. Arguably one of the biggest temples in the world. Some people say it actually is the biggest temple complex in the world. It's from ancient Egyptian times. It's world famous. And there's a hotel near there, the Hilton Hotel. Which normally gets many, many tourists. And they have agreed to display the Fikra Helmholtz bracelets in one of the shops in their lobby. Which would be sold at pretty low cost to tourists and others. No profit to anybody, but a percentage of the sales is returned to encourage the young people to make them. But the Hilton is not taking any commission at all. And none of the other people involved in this is taking any money at all. So if there is any payment, it will only be to the young people making the bracelets. So, you know, not perhaps for me to say, but I think that's extremely encouraging. And a great endorsement of the concept, which indeed other people have liked the idea of too. Hopefully be able to rule this out into other places in Egypt. This is Marion Tabet, who's in the shop at the Hilton. Just to show the shop where the bracelets are sold. Okay. Now, I think we can all benefit from things like this. If we're willing to try and set them up, even if they're very small, sort of seed crystals. And my sort of summary statement here is, you know, have a go. Why not? Don't be stopped by lack of resources. I know if you work in universities and other groups, there are all sorts of bureaucratic invasions. But, you know, where there's a will, there's a way, as we say. And rather than just saying what a mess, it's better to just try and do something about it, even if it's small. As I said, lighting even a small candle is better than cursing the darkness. So have a go is my message. And that's it. So are there any questions? Thank you very much, David. That was a very interesting conversation. Well, very interesting presentation. The conversation which needs to arise out of this is a number one. How do you keep it going? So what is the administrative structure that supports this? Well, it was for people from the university background. This is part of the application process. You're meant to demonstrate how something can be sustained in the, well, at least for the duration of your project. But what structures did you put into place? Or is it completely built on trust that the other side will continue with the project? Well, at the moment, it's extremely basic. It's just me doing all of the admin from this side of things. I've begun to interest some formal structures. I mean, I mentioned the Archbishop of Canterbury and his team. They're interested, but not actively doing anything, dare I say. That sounds too harsh, but it's down to whatever I do. My own university here in Plymouth is again interested, but they're not supporting it financially in any way. And so it depends on goodwill from well wishes who occasionally give me some money and money I contribute myself. So that's the financial side. In Egypt, there are many people interested. They tend not to be able to give money for it. They are doing the admins outside of it. So I have several people in Luxor who work on the Figurahalua project free because they see the benefit. And the monasteries, as I mentioned, have been directly involved as well. But sadly, two of the key figures there have died in the past year. So it's all a bit difficult. A couple of months ago, well, yes, a month or so ago, I was approached from some people in Cairo, who seem to be interested in having me work with the Egyptian equivalent of the NHS. So I hope I can involve them in at least the Figurahalua project. And there were some psychiatrists in an NHS group working in Cornwall, here in England, who are also interested. So slowly, bit by bit, we are building up interest and trying to form a network of those interested and capable of helping. So one of my next aims is to try to make contact with other universities who might be interested in helping, even if there's no finance associated with it. Some people might be interested in doing it out of interest or goodwill. And, you know, over the course of time, the momentum I hope will build up to publicity and build further. China has a question, namely, considered establishing a non-governmental organization, either here or in Egypt. I mean, yes, so actually setting up an organization that can help you because we're all mortals, you know, I can fall down the steps and so on. The two pieces they gave way to COVID. So this is an organization usually tends to last longer. But what are the obstacles? So what are the prospects for that? Well, I still am a charity trustee for some other organizations. So generally speaking, to set up a charity, you know, if you're small, you don't need to make too complicated annual returns. Because if you are less small, then it all gets very bureaucratic. But even for a small charity, you need, you know, a board of trustees. It involves lawyers and meetings and stuff, which we haven't done. Mainly because it seemed to be taking up time from the actual work, if you see what I mean. So yes, I understand what you mean. I'm not a mortal. I'm not a spring chicken either. So I don't know how long I should be able to continue with this. If I don't find it possible, I hope there will be others who will, you know, catch the spark as it were and carry on with the idea. And I thank you all again today for taking part in this as it's a means of just showing the sort of thing that might be done. You can all do your own things, you know, obviously similar to this or help with this. That'd be great, whatever. But we just haven't got around to it, frankly. Because it was all a bit bureaucratic and, you know, legalistic and whatnot. Yeah, ideally, it's a good idea, but it takes money to run these things. And as things have been standing, all the money, whatever I've been given, has gone to the people in Egypt. And I've not, you know, I've not kept anything for expenses or phone calls or whatever else it's all gone to the work over there because they are the ones who need the money more than we do generally. Yes, Romina has something to say now. Can you speak Romina. Yes, can you hear me Lars. Yes, I can. Well, thank you David for the presentation that was really, really fascinating. I guess over a decade working in the African region and I kind of relate to what you're saying that you don't need, you know, financial means or a funded project externally to do what you believe in that that could help right and be impact oriented and not just constrained to a desk right doing research. It can, it can be knowledge for social impact. I guess what I was, I'm kind of in the same situation, but I'm fortunate now to have a grant funded by UK right and I'm working in Ethiopia in Eastern Africa. And we're trying to actually reverse the knowledge transfer from the UK to, you know, to law and middle income countries which has been the historical paradigm and learn from our counterparts in Ethiopia and Eritrea and feed that learning into the UK domestic violence sector so we're looking at actually at promoting religious culturally sensitive domestic violence systems. I'm fortunate that after 10 years of being a poor student and struggling like you to build those relationships and do that research, I am a train anthropologist myself. I have obtained this grant but you know, even if you have the ground just I want to put this out there. It's not sustainable per se right what makes it sustainable I think is what you're doing David, building those connections and trust and those two way relationships that you know the true the genuine respect that will will feed people's commitment and loyalty I think loyalty is really important. And what I suggested the non government organization I think it's if you do consider it perhaps, I don't know the laws in Egypt but actually it's easier for us to to establish it in Ethiopia which is what we're looking at instead of the UK context because it's so complex even when you're a small entity as you said so perhaps looking into the Egyptian legal system and seeing if that's that's a possibility and then having it stuffed by you know Egyptian colleagues and and and you know people you trust who could then build it from the ground up and then they own it and they, you know they feel that they're doing something. And perhaps, you know, giving them a livelihood as well so I think you're right it needs that initial capital but I think you've been so effective, reaching all these stakeholders, and really disseminating the initiative I think, I mean I really, I am really surprised because I think you've done a lot in terms of reaching you know high level stakeholders that that even a funded grant over a 1 million funded grant would not achieve so I think you've been, you've been quite strategic with with whom you've reached to. So I think you know I think you could definitely consider that because it's such an important initiative to create more links between, you know, low and low and middle income countries in general but non Western countries, you know, more broadly and the UK and Western industrialized societies because, you know, not just in the spirit of helping each other but in the spirit of decolonizing and in the spirit of understanding that we are we are so much more similar than different you know and really crossing boundaries because nowadays, it's so internationalized right the world, we have international migration diaspora people working internationally so I think, I think this this initiative really deserves to continue I just wanted to share that and thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you very much, Romina is very encouraging of you to say that I'm very very grateful to you. Please, please, you know, if there's anything you feel we we too could get by working together in some form of synergy, I'd be very grateful for that. I'm sure you're very busy lady, but, you know, it is also possible that that maybe we could work together in some way. I had a nice meeting with Lars up in London a few weeks back when one of my daughters was getting married. I do hope I can carry on working with with friends at SOAS as well which is, you know, a world famous institution and deeply respected so any any of these links that might be possible I'd be very grateful for. And, you know, that would be great. Definitely share my contact. Yes. We are both round at the beginning of January for the, for the Coptic New Year, maybe we can have a get together, I mean in person at SOAS, where we can have a joint, you know, awareness raising and perhaps even fundraising meeting. This is something that we will need to see. I mean, yes, but that that was an idea that I had in the beginning but I'm afraid that, you know, the authorities here will close down everything because of the new. Can I, sorry to interrupt, can I just briefly say, I'm hoping, God willing, and COVID willing, perhaps is the right phrase nowadays, that I will be able to go back to Egypt from the 27th of December to the 10th of January. I don't know if it's going to be that difficult, but that's what I'm currently booked to do. And I want to make contact with Egyptian universities somehow if I possibly can. So if so, if so, if focus so as could help me with that. Again, I'd be very, very grateful. It's so difficult to find people of good will in universities anywhere, let alone universities abroad. And I think that's the university connection that SOAS has, but I see a hand here by Nicholas, Nick, come, please come in. David, yes, I've listened in absolute amazement to, to what you've done. And it completely overshadows anything that I tried to do myself earlier when I set up what I called Eastern Christian links. Especially from the idea of raising some money for a charity that I was connected with in Eastern Europe. And I started to give talks on orthodoxy to churches that would be willing to make a contribution to this charity in exchange for giving the talk. I exhausted all the churches within 15, 20, 30 miles where I lived time. And the intention was to try to raise awareness amongst churches in the UK about churches in the Middle East. I wasn't a huge amount by doing that. And I, I, I hope that one of the two of the seeds may have fallen on, on good ground as it were. I developed that by then taking pilgrimages. When I took to the churches in Turkey. I had the benefit of Metropolitan Seraphim, the Metropolitan Bishop in charge of the British Orthodox Church. And we then went to Syria, and what you have experienced from the authorities in Egypt under terrible conditions. We experienced exactly the same under much more than nine conditions in 2006. We had a mine agency of the Syrian government, which existed to promote, if not reconciliation certainly cooperation among the Christians, and, sorry, among the religions represented in Syria. It was a privilege to meet, have introductions to and have discussions with senior Islamic clergy, shakes from both the Sunni and the Shia populations. And the message that we got from both sides and from ordinary members of the community, again from both sides that we met was we Christians we Muslims we can live together. And, and I vividly remember the Orthodox priest, who was given to look after us whilst we were in Aleppo from the Greek Orthodox Archbishop. And placing is some very tall black hat on the front of the minibus that he was used to drive around. In a perfect display that he was saying this is a Christian monk or priest on his travels, and local people were delighted to see him. Unfortunately, of course, tragedy has overtaken Syria the people that we know that we met to our captured kidnapped fate unknown one is murdered. What will happen I don't know but the, what you have done is utterly amazing. And, and hugely to your credit. I just wish that our activities could have been remotely similar, but the idea that you have got. As humble as I am all I say is absolutely wonderful. I can only wish you the very best of them, a good fortune is, it's something that we absolutely have to do. These are our brothers. No reason for Islam and Christianity not living together in some peaceful way. Yes, thank you so much. Deeply grateful on blushing rather the comments being made by our select few here. Again, please, you know, let's stay in contact if we can to Lars. I think we could share all sorts of information about trying to talk to people in Britain about this because I've given talks to many many churches and schools and things as well. It's usually fairly disappointing, a little interested British Christians are in Christians in the Middle East, even though Christianity began in the Middle East, they just don't seem to bother about that. So, again, if we can work together, I'd be grateful and very keen to hear whatever guidance, you know, any or all of our people gathered today can help me with, if you can. Thank you very much. My experience is simply the plugging away. And I do very little now I'm afraid because I've sort of retired but it is so essential that the message is put wherever one can. Plugging away is one of the main elements of success, I think. Keep going. Let's say it's been humbling to listen to you. Thank you so much. Please put up on the, the text that will accompany this recorded session on the so as YouTube channel, your contact address for anyone inviting anyone to get in touch with you who wants to contribute. I think this is something that will be, I mean, it can be watched in perpetuity, the world. So if anybody types into a search engine, you know, if you can help out, then you will find, we'll get through to that. But in any case. Yes, forgive me interrupting. Thank you. Thank you for that. If you're talking to me about putting my contact details on. I don't know how to do that. Can I can I send you my I mean you have them but me. Could you do that for me please or advise me on how to go about doing it. In any case, I have to finish now, but thank you very much. And to all of you watching this afterwards, and to those of you who joined us here. I would like to say goodbye from the British Library today in central London. It was a remarkable presentation and I, I think the thoughts that you gave us on our daily walks through life are tremendously. How can we help how can we contribute because we all have our own talents. If we have talents in the Greek sense is we have a lot of money then of course that we can also contribute that but the sense of interest and education. I think that we can also look at. Okay, but I'm going to stop this now. Say goodbye to everybody and I am looking forward to you. In different contexts. Thank you so much. Thank you, David. Thank you. All the best. Thank you.