Zoë Wild: One Light Global
Publisher’s Note: Zoe Wild and her team will be traveling to Serbia in mid-February to work with the horrendous refugee crisis there. To share your compassion with the refugees, please DONATE HERE.
ZOË WILD: They were mentors and completely from the goodness of their hearts. They asked for nothing in return, and they just wanted to help the refugees through the work they knew we were doing. It was so good.
SANDIE SEDGBEER: Zoe Wild, One Light Global is founded on the deep belief that our fate is shared and that dividing the world into us and them, the charitable and the needy, is no longer an option. Can you expand on that?
ZOË WILD: As I said, when I was a child I always wanted to do this sort of work and I had done volunteering work through my life, but nothing to this extent. The reason that I have never actually gone into it as a profession was that I felt that this sector of our society was often divided into the poor, the needy, and the people that were helping them.
While I was in Lesbos, someone posted a quote on my Facebook wall from aboriginal elders that said: “If you have come to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then come and let us work together.” When I read it, really hit home. That is the way that I feel about service. It is that we do not do it because there are these poor other people, we do it because they are us, that we are connected. Our fates are incredibly intricately woven and until we are all living freely and joyfully and safely none of us are because we had shut down that part of ourselves that know, that sees someone suffering and reaches out a hand. When we shut that down, we are really losing out on our experiences being alive, and our whole life is impacted by that.
I wanted to create an organization that redefined the charitable sector to be about solidarity rather than charity. To be about co-creating with these people something new, and I really feel that this time in our human history the problems we are facing are global – like Global Warming – like the displacement of millions of people, of refugees, is going to impact us over here. It is going to change the environment. So, to come up with solutions to these global problems, we need people from every different culture and every different area of the world to come together and share their ideas and create new solutions. Some people call this synergy and emergence. We need to bring together these new ideas to have a new idea emerge that we have not thought of before that will help everyone. I think we also saw that in this election in America, this past election, really, we need to come together to find solutions that cover everyone.
SANDIE SEDGBEER: Are you concerned about what might happen to our immigration policy and America’s ability to take in refugees once Donald Trump is inaugurated?
ZOË WILD: Absolutely, I am, I am, but I am taking it day by day, and I think it makes it all the more important that we are here now and that we are helping the people that are here to stay here. He says he will kick out a lot of illegal immigrants that have broken laws, but I do not think he will be able to remove new refugees that have already been accepted. I do think that it is an important time for us to spread awareness and compassion and that is a huge part of One-Light to me, that is work I had done before, that is working to understand each other and build empathy and integrate in a way that still honors and preserves all cultures.
SANDIE SEDGBEER: It is unbelievable that so many governments do not seem to understand how important it is to provide mental health services and help. I read a blog post on your website, and it just feels criminal that so many people are ignoring that factor. What do you do to offer that kind of mental health support to refugees?
ZOË WILD: It is such a crucial element of what is needed and of what we do. For 2017, one of our main goals is to be able to offer a lot more of that support. We had a refugee in Phoenix recently who tried to commit suicide because he could not find a job and could not support his family. They do not offer any sort of training for that, so we want to provide workshops that bring people together, and right now in Phoenix, I think we will talk about it. The Women’s Centre will be a big part of what we are offering there. Support for women to just see and share their stories.
I am a facilitator for Healing of Memories, which was a global, non-profit organization started by Father Michael Lapsley in South Africa. It is for bringing people together to heal trauma through simply sharing their stories with other people who have been through similar events. It was started by people who had been through apartheid, but it has gone all over the world, and we do it with veterans in Phoenix now, and it has been one of the most powerful formats I have ever seen. One of my goals for 2017 is to be doing these workshops with refugees.
SANDIE SEDGBEER: Give us some examples of what a donation can provide. I do not think people understand that what is a very small sum for most of us can provide so much for a refugee.
ZOË WILD: Well, every single dollar counts. People always say that, but it is so true. When refugees come to America the Federal Government gives an organization like IRC – there are nine organizations that the government works with – so they will give an organization like IRC (International Refuge Committee) $950 per person in that family. So, let us say it is a family of five – two parents and three kids – generally, one of the parents is sick or injured – and they give them $950 per person. That is a one-time fee and that goes to IRC, and IRC is federally mandated to spend that money on a certain specific thing like filling the cupboards with food, cleaning supplies, furniture, and a month’s rent. By the time, they have covered those supplies. Generally, all the money has been spent. The family is put in this apartment, which has maybe enough food for a month and cleaning supplies, but they must then find a job and pay the next month’s rent, and pay for their medical bills and pay for all these things, but they do not speak the language. There is really no end to the need, so every single dollar helps.
SANDIE SEDGBEER: I noticed on the website that people can also buy bracelets – Be the Light Bracelets. Tell us about this.
ZOË WILD: That is right. That is one of my favorite projects that we do. The women in Turkey were making these bracelets, and they are so beautiful, and everyone loves them, so now we have started a project where they can make the bracelets and people can buy them for $15 or $20, and the money goes directly to the women. We are going to be moving it to Phoenix and having the women refugees there. We are setting up a place for them to do it, so we must adjust that. I think it will be $15 but it might be $20, and then they get paid per bracelet, and some of the money goes back to One Light, as some of the money goes to promoting the bracelets. They are just such a beautiful thing, and the women are so happy. They tell me how meaningful it is to do and to create something beautiful that another woman is enjoying, their American sisters.
SANDIE SEDGBEER: Now when you returned to the West, you were shocked to see how differently meditation is taught here. Tell us, what is the difference?
ZOË WILD: When I came back to the West, it felt like the meditation courses I went to were almost counter-productive in that they were very controlling of the mind and there seemed to be a lot of ego and materialism in the spiritual community. There were a lot of beautiful teachers, and there were a lot of benefits that people were getting, but it was limited to the meditation cushion and it felt like it was limited to a certain outfit or a certain way of talking. I used to call it “Therapist Talking.” It sounded like everyone was a therapist who was a meditation teacher. They look a certain way, they act a certain way, and it was a bit socio-economically divided, and racially divided. The way that it is taught in the East, everything is meditation the way I was taught. Every moment is meditation. So, however, your own natural state is of speaking and being and doing, it is everything, it brings everything alive.
SANDIE SEDGBEER: Do you offer to teach meditation to the refugees you work with?
ZOË WILD: You know I have not. We do meditation and yoga, and sometimes I will lead them in a guided meditation which they love. But because the majority of them are Muslim, though a lot of them are Christian – I have not met any Buddhist refugees from the Middle East – but I am usually the first Buddhist that they have met. I do not offer it in that way, offer an extended course, though we do offer workshops for women where they can do a little yoga and some guided meditations. They have loved it, and we have had a wonderful response to it. It is not religious, it is secular.
SANDIE SEDGBEER: Do you have a wish list of things that you would like to accomplish in the next year or two?
ZOË WILD: Yes! Getting the Women’s Center up and running in Phoenix so that new refugees can have a place, not only to make a little money and support themselves but also to gather together and spend time with other women and to learn skills and learn the language. That is a huge wish list of mine. Also, it impacts so many lives. To do more of these workshops, and to be able to travel wherever people might want to invite us and to really help cultures integrate, is a huge wish list item. Putting more kids in school – as many kids in school as possible in Turkey – and I would also like to start working in Lebanon with the girls that are being sold into sexual slavery. Those are some of the initial projects that are big wish list items for this year.
SANDIE SEDGBEER: Any official organization, to speak and talk about your experiences and to share what you have discovered and what you feel helps?
ZOË WILD: We have a wonderful Buddhist organization, Threads of Wisdom, who found us and is partnering with us to make Buddhist book covers. They want the refugees to make Buddhist book covers for some ancient wisdom books that are disintegrating in China, and they need book covers. So, their Guru, I guess, was saying that he wants the refugees to do it, so they reached out to us.
