Raising money for Healing Hands to help fund volunteers offering holistic therapies, working in Bosnia with civil war victims and also now offering treatments to Armed Forces returning from duty
So by running this marathon I am aiming to raise £750 so I can go to Bosnia in Spring/ Summer 2012 for two weeks to volunteer with Healing Hands. My employer, Deutsche Bank, match all funding by DB employees and up to £1000 from family and friends so I may raise enough to get another scouser massage therapist on board.
Just 3 hours away on a plane from the UK, in the early 1990s, generations of people in Bosnia had their lives changed forever. I cannot think of any worse pain than a mother or father losing their ability to protect their children and knowing that, in that moment, nothing will ever be the same again. How anyone can ever find peace again not knowing the fate of their most dearest loved ones, the people they have nurtured and protected thus far, is quite simply beyond my comprehension.
The images from the tv at the time are haunting, and there is one in particular of a little boy with his pet rabbit in Srebenica with all the other people seeking protection from the UN, thinking they’d be protected by the Dutch as the Serbians came in led by Ratko Mladic; I often wonder what happened to him as the massacre (Srebrenica genocide in which over 8000 people lost their lives) began not long after. The little lad just wanted his mum and dad – it’s so sad to think this was his experience of childhood.
I have read many books on World War 2, and indeed wrote all my French coursework on the Holocaust, the French Resistance and life under Nazi rule. I have read many books on Rwanda, Cambodia, Kosovo, Bosnia and the inescapable sense I always get from them all is the utter sense of despair and indescribable emotional pain of the protectors/ the adults at being stripped of their basic instinct to protect their vulnerable, their elderly and their children
And so whilst nothing can undo this, it cannot bring men back out of mass, shallow graves in Srebrenica and repatriate them for one last loving hug with their families, it cannot bring a glisten to the hollow eyes of the mother who sits staring at the wall every day in a refugee centre, wanting for a time that will never come again; something can be done to try and remind them that we care.
We are so, so fortunate to not have experienced what they have gone through, so I wanted to be part of the good work that the Healing Hands Network does, and that they have been doing in Bosnia for over 14 years. I will be working as a Holistic Therapist in their Sarajevo clinic and in their mobile outreach clinics with people who remain displaced over a decade on.
My last marathon was somewhat of a baptism of fire, running on a day when it was hotter than in Athens and watching someone lose his life on a pavement. I'm hoping this one will be calmer and who knows even I might enjoy this one.
So by running this marathon I am aiming to raise £750 so I can go to Bosnia in Spring/ Summer 2012 for two weeks to volunteer with Healing Hands. My employer, Deutsche Bank, match all funding by DB employees and up to £1000 from family and friends so I may raise enough to get another scouser massage therapist on board.
Just 3 hours away on a plane from the UK, in the early 1990s, generations of people in Bosnia had their lives changed forever. I cannot think of any worse pain than a mother or father losing their ability to protect their children and knowing that, in that moment, nothing will ever be the same again. How anyone can ever find peace again not knowing the fate of their most dearest loved ones, the people they have nurtured and protected thus far, is quite simply beyond my comprehension.
The images from the tv at the time are haunting, and there is one in particular of a little boy with his pet rabbit in Srebenica with all the other people seeking protection from the UN, thinking they’d be protected by the Dutch as the Serbians came in led by Ratko Mladic; I often wonder what happened to him as the massacre (Srebrenica genocide in which over 8000 people lost their lives) began not long after. The little lad just wanted his mum and dad – it’s so sad to think this was his experience of childhood.
I have read many books on World War 2, and indeed wrote all my French coursework on the Holocaust, the French Resistance and life under Nazi rule. I have read many books on Rwanda, Cambodia, Kosovo, Bosnia and the inescapable sense I always get from them all is the utter sense of despair and indescribable emotional pain of the protectors/ the adults at being stripped of their basic instinct to protect their vulnerable, their elderly and their children
And so whilst nothing can undo this, it cannot bring men back out of mass, shallow graves in Srebrenica and repatriate them for one last loving hug with their families, it cannot bring a glisten to the hollow eyes of the mother who sits staring at the wall every day in a refugee centre, wanting for a time that will never come again; something can be done to try and remind them that we care.
We are so, so fortunate to not have experienced what they have gone through, so I wanted to be part of the good work that the Healing Hands Network does, and that they have been doing in Bosnia for over 14 years. I will be working as a Holistic Therapist in their Sarajevo clinic and in their mobile outreach clinics with people who remain displaced over a decade on.
My last marathon was somewhat of a baptism of fire, running on a day when it was hotter than in Athens and watching someone lose his life on a pavement. I'm hoping this one will be calmer and who knows even I might enjoy this one.
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