Be The Change: A book review by Richard Barnett

It's hard to find much positivity in the media these days. The vacuous ‘celebrity' culture combined with a political system riddled with spin and half truths leaves most people with little to inspire them. But of course that does not mean that great things are happening and that there are many truly wonderful people doing them. In compiling ‘Be The Change' Trenna Cormack has found a whole bunch of them!

'Be The Change' by Trenna Cormackis the product of Trenna's attendance at a conference of the same name in May 2005. Delegates listened to a series of speakers all of whom had an inspirational story to tell and were exhorted to go out and take action themselves to provide leadership in changing the world. A tall order but Trenna's response was to compile an anthology of interviews she conducted with many of the speakers and bring their experiences to a much wider audience.

The result is both inspiring and humbling in equal measure. Some of the twenty or so interviewees are well known figures such as Jonathon Porritt, Rob Hopkins and Satish Kumar but it's unlikely that you will have come across most of the others. And that's what I found so encouraging about this book. Here you can read about individuals who came across a problem and simply had to act. Guided by their own passion and dedication they have all made small but infinitely significant differences in an amazing range of places and people.

For example there is the barrister turned circus performer who took clowns to Iraq to brighten the relatively wretched lives of many hundreds of Iraqi children. Then there's the Harvard graduate who took strength from the 'political' deaths of both of her parents in Nigeria to campaign for women's rights there. Other interviewees recount there involvement in such diverse issues as bringing higher education to sub-Saharan Africa, tackling disability in the developing world, undertaking ‘guerrilla gardening' in London and confronting the horrors of child slave labour.

Each chapter is, as I say, the outcome of an interview with the author. However the questions have been edited out so that you get a smoothly flowing account of what each person has been doing. The length of each chapter is just right. You can easily read one in around 10-15 minutes and it's the ideal book to dip into when you need a little boost to your optimism levels in these difficult times. I would highly recommend it.

Copyright 2008 Richard Barnett ‘Be The Change' is published by Love Books.