“Peace cannot be restored by forcing ourselves to forget. It only can be achieved when we approach each other of our own accord.” Coming from a south German home, Judith Brand (born 1969) soon decided that her aim was to make things better for less fortunate people. She got to know the situation of war-traumatized […]
“Every day I meet women who were never asked how they feel. Just to listen to a woman, to embrace her, to listen to the problems of their desperate lives brings help.” In the last 15 years, the number of prostitutes along the border between Germany and the Czech Republic has increased dramatically, and so […]
“I don’t accept the argument that prostitution and slavery are as old as humanity itself and that fighting them is a task for Sisyphus. Diseases are old, too, but we never stop fighting them.” Sr. Lea helps women who have been victims of trafficking. She and her colleagues assist them while giving testimony about the […]
I am on a long narrow path I walk day and night I do not know in what state Im in I walk day and night. . . . Asik Veysel Seyran Ates, born in Turkey in 1963, works in Berlin as a lawyer opposed to forced marriages and so-called honor killings. In 1984, working […]
“I am life, that wants to live amidst life that wants to live.” Albert Schweizer In 1992, Marianne Grosspietsch founded Shanti Sewa Griha, a nursing facility for leprosy patients in Katmandu. Today, Marianne also gives shelter to the poor, the disabled, and the persecuted. More than 1200 persons receive medical care. There are kindergartens, schools, […]
“Blindness is not the end of the world. You can have a wonderful life as a blind person.” Sabriye Tenberken, a German who became blind at the age of 12, established the first school for blind Tibetan children in Lhasa in 1998. She had to overcome numerous obstacles, including official indifference, active hostility, and irregular […]
“Matriarchy presents us a well balanced, egalitarian and peaceful society without wars of conquest and the rule of dominance. I am convinced that matriarchy is needed for a humane world.” Dr. Heide Göttner-Abendroth (born 1941) taught philosophy for ten years at the University of Munich and is the founder of modern matriarchal studies. Her 30 […]
“Life is a never-ending learning process. I learned everyone is unique, yet everyone has equal rights. I learned it is essential to defend such rights, to respect the rich diversity of cultures.” An exemplary biography of the 20th century: Ruth Weiss is born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1924. In 1936, she arrives […]
“These disabled, rejected, so-called ineducable children show us adults what we so often forget in our daily struggle: without love between people our lives would be cold and barren.” When the Childrens Center “Nadjeschda” (hope) began to work with abandoned children in 1989, hardly anyone in Kyrgyzstan knew what future these children would face. In […]
“We must break the cycle of killing. The first step is that the victims of violence do not become offenders themselves.” A nurse and therapeutic specialist, Sr. Maria Christina Färber (born in 1957) worked with children from broken homes in Germany. In 1999, during the Kosovo War, she moved to the Albanian city of Shkodra, […]
