INTERVIEW:Clare Mulvany spent a year travelling the world meeting volunteers and organisers who are helping communities and enabling social change everywhere from Uganda to San Francisco. In the process, she learned a lot about herself, too
IT WAS A QUOTE on a fridge magnet that encouraged the germ of an idea. It wasn’t a practical idea. It was more of a dream really, but seeing those words every day on the fridge door helped to keep it to the forefront of Clare Mulvany’s mind.
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.” The quote on the magnet was from Goethe, and for Mulvany it was the nudge she needed to take the plunge and begin organising what would turn out to be a truly remarkable adventure.
Her plan was to travel around the world meeting people who make a difference – social entrepreneurs they’re called. They are people who work for the good of their own communities, as well as people who work for the good of communities overseas.
“At the time I was really broke and in my head I was going, ‘What are you doing? You really need to go out and get a proper job,’ ” Mulvany recalls. But instead of listening to the voice of reason, she left her job as a project manager for Suas Educational Development, an organisation that combats educational disadvantage in Ireland and overseas, and began to concentrate on raising funds to enable her trip. In early 2006, less than a year after the idea coming into her mind, she set off, camera in hand, to see who she could find.
The resulting book, One Wild Life, is a lush, colourful tome. Part photo-journal, part-travelogue, it documents Mulvany's travels across the globe and her conversations along the way with these people working for social change. The body of the book is a collection of interviews with them. Interviews are in turn punctuated by diary extracts and photographs which lend a wonderful immediacy and excitement to the whole adventure.
Mulvany is an interesting character. From Rathfarnham, Dublin, the 30-year-old holds a master’s in international education from Oxford. Articulate and softly spoken, she gives off a sense of understated self-assurance, possibly born of years of travelling and self-reliance.
Even still, travelling the world alone for almost a full year must have been a daunting experience. “I was definitely nervous,” she says. “I’ve lived abroad on two occasions. I spent a year in Tonga when I was 17 and then I taught for a year in China after college. China was a particularly tough year, so I knew that if I could cope with that, this would be fine. In my head I knew that if things went wrong I could always come home.”
The journey in One Wild Lifetook in Africa, Asia, Australasia and the south Pacific, as well as the US. But Mulvany felt it was important to start at home. The first part of the book is a who's who of Irish social entrepreneurship, featuring interviews with Colm O'Gorman of One in Four and Amnesty, Mary Davis of Special Olympics Ireland and Tara Cunningham of Release Speech Therapy, to name just a few.
For the most part, the book evolved while she travelled. “There were only about three people who I knew had to be in the book beforehand,” she explained. “The rest emerged later.” Caroline Casey, founder of Kanchi (formerly the Aisling Foundation), was one of the three; Taddy Blecher, who set up a university in South Africa was another; and the third was Kailash Satyarthi, an engineer who now devotes his life to freeing children from bonded labour in India.
None disappointed. Mulvany cites the trip to one of Satyarthi’s schools in rural India as one of the highlights of the journey. “I spent three or four days there,” she recalls. “Basically, kids had been rescued from factories and brought to this children’s home for rehabilitation. It sounds absolutely dire, but it was one of the most magical places I’ve ever been. It was quite far out into rural Rajasthan. The kids came running to greet Satyarthi and his son. We played for hours, sat down together, ate together. I could really see them thriving in that environment. Witnessing that, being around it, it’s actually hard to describe the feeling, or the spirit behind it.”
Her travels began in Nairobi. There was no strict schedule. She simply had three months to get to Cape Town from where she would fly on to India. “I really really loved Uganda so I ended up staying longer,” she says, “which meant I didn’t have as much time in Mozambique for example.” In Uganda she met Dr Peter Mugyenyi, who was instrumental in bringing about the widespread availability of affordable anti-retroviral drugs for HIV/Aids in his country, and many others who endeavour to make their country a better place.
She had some luck along the way. “I lost my wallet three times and it was returned each time. Once I lost it in a national park in India and I still got it back,” she laughs.
Of course, there were difficult times as well. An unscheduled aeroplane detour meant that she arrived in Mozambique in the middle of the night. “That was one situation where I was thinking, ‘what have I done?’ I had no cash, my phone wasn’t working, I was with all these strange people. It turned out they were able to give me a lift to where I was going, so it all worked out, but there was definitely a sense of, ‘this is going to be a disaster’,” Mulvany says.
Overall, she learned to rely on her gut. “People get the sense that travelling like that is going to be really difficult, but really, particularly in the poorest places people would support you and help you so much. It was amazing really,” Mulvany says. “You learn about your gut instinct but you learn to trust the good in people as well. I stayed in homes across Africa and you just trust that people’s intentions are good. Only once I was in a taxi and I didn’t think it felt right so I trusted that and got out.”
Keen to focus on more than just the developing world, Mulvany interviewed social entrepreneurs in New Zealand and the US on her journey. Some, like Californian Matt Flannery, were running innovative projects to help communities in the developing world. Flannery’s idea is fantastically simple, using the internet to enable individuals over here to provide loans to people in the developing world. Someone in the US has $50 they want to donate to charity but they want to know where their money is going. Someone in Uganda needs a loan of $50 to set up a bike repair business. Kiva, Flannery’s organisation, enables that pair to connect with each other. The loan is given and repaid and then the investor can decide whether to invest in another business.
Others, such as San Francisco’s Tony Deifell, are working to improve things for people in their own communities. Deifell teaches photography to visually impaired students. He teaches blind people to take photographs. “It was really amazing to talk to all of these different people,” Mulvany says.
How did she pay for the trip? “I’m probably still paying for it a bit!” Mulvany laughs. “Word got out about what I was doing so I had offers of places to stay which kept costs lower. Then a week before I was to pay for my tickets – I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that really – I was at a development event and I just got talking to a man who asked me who I was and what I was doing. I just explained what I had in mind and we were talking for about 20 minutes. I had no idea who he was but at the end of it he asked me for my address. Two days later a cheque for my flights arrived in the post.” Sponsorship from friends and family as well as a bank loan helped, but on the whole she just tried to keep costs very low indeed.
Coming home, according to Mulvany, was the hardest part of the journey. “I hadn’t realised that it would have such an effect on me,” she says. “All of these different experiences, opening up to people, hearing all of these stories, relying on myself – even the artistic side like the photography and the writing had opened up to me. And yet life was moving on here in Ireland. I was stone broke, I had no money.”
She stayed with a friend for the summer and that allowed her to gather herself somewhat. “Since then I’ve been working freelance and writing the book.
It’s quite a lonely experience writing, after meeting so many people. You’re trying to compile all the experiences in your head. It’s very intense and it took a while for everything to settle and for me to decide how I wanted the book to be.”
Receiving a Social Entrepreneur award, which included a grant, from Social Entrepreneurs Ireland helped to keep her going through the writing process. “It also helped in getting the book published, I think,” she says. “You know when you have a bit of endorsement like that it helps.”
It has been a long journey. “When I finally held the book in my hands I just burst into tears,” Mulvany says. “When you see something you put your heart and soul into and suddenly it’s tangible and real. It’s a nice experience.”
Mulvany is still very much involved in development and community issues. I wonder how she remains engaged with it all?
Mulvany shrugs. “The problems are massive, you know?” she says. “There are a billion people hungry in the world today and Irish Aid just cut its budget by €100 million. It doesn’t make sense. But everywhere I went there were so many people working to solve the problems. They may not all have the right answers but collectively there’s more happening than you might think.”
It must get to her sometimes though? She nods. “Sure. Particularly in India where the five-star hotel and the shanty town are right beside each other. It doesn’t make sense. It makes me angry. There is so much injustice and it should wreck your head, because it’s not right. I was battling with that a lot of the time while at the same time trying to stay open and positive and optimistic. I think there’s something in me that pushes me, but I’m not sure what it is. I’m not happy just sitting back, but I don’t know where it comes from.”
She looks serious for a second. “We need to be more open to ideas and opportunities now in Ireland. It’s often the people at the grassroots level, these social innovators who are really worth listening to at a time like this. If the book enables that a little bit and raises their profile, then I think it will have done a good job.”
One Wild Life: A Journey to Discover People Who Change Our Worldis published by Collins Press. www.claremulvany.com.