Tower and Town, May 2015

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The Marlborough Brandt Group Lecture

Martha Harrison, a Year 9 pupil from Marlborough College Malaysia, reviews Baroness Cox's Marlborough Brandt Group Lent Lecture "The Pain and the Passion - the privilege of making a difference".

Baroness Cox first introduced herself and HART (Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust), an organization that helps the small communities and villages that the large aid organisations are not able to reach. Throughout her talk, Baroness Cox told us a lot of outstanding stories, yet I feel one really sums up what HART does quite well. It is the story of how a boy called Sala from a very remote village in Burma called out to HART, and told them of the many people dying of easily preventable medical issues. HART then helped Sala to create a medical school, where people from the small villages of Burma can have a medical education and find the right medicines and equipment to survive.

We started off in Azerbaijan, where Baroness Cox opened her first rehabilitation centre. It was incredible to hear about the passion and determination she had for helping others. We then “jetted off ” to Burma! Baroness Cox told a heart-wrenching story about a village so remote that you had to walk for five days to reach the nearest hospital. A boy from this village fell sick of pneumonia and a number of men tried to carry him to get treatment. Yet because of the tough terrain, they unfortunately did not make it and the boy died. After hearing this story, Baroness Cox helped supply this village and many others with the right safety equipment. Finally, we travelled to Nigeria, where we were told even more stories of how HART worked alongside the people in Nigeria, so no farmer would go out of business or no builder would be left without a job.

Altogether, I feel that everyone who came to this inspiring talk was amazed at how one organisation founded by one incredible lady can make such a positive impact on so many people's lives. And at the end, when we were all giving Baroness Cox the biggest round of applause possible, she did the humbling thing of standing up and applauding the people in the photo behind her, the children of Nigeria who despite what they had been through, were still smiling.

Martha Harrison