The Smallest Room

David Auerbach - Bringing Dignity to the Most Marginalised

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 19:33:07 GMT

David Auerbach is a co-founder of Sanergy, a pioneering social enterprise in Nairobi, Kenya which builds healthy, prosperous communities in Africa's informal settlements by making hygienic sanitation affordable and accessible. Sanergy's systems-based approach empowers the local community to own and operate sanitation facilities, while Sanergy provides business and operational support to ensure its operators thrive. Sanergy collects and recycles the waste into animal feed and organic fertilizer, which is sold to Kenyan farmers to address the region's food security challenges.

Previously, David ran Partnerships at Endeavor, a non-profit that helps high-impact entrepreneurs in the developing world. He served as the Deputy Chair for Poverty Alleviation at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2005-6. David taught in central China for two years as a Yale-China Teaching Fellow. David began his career at the Center for American Progress. David is an Ashoka, Echoing Green and Rainer Arnhold Fellow. He holds an MBA from MIT and a BA from Yale University. He lives in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Kathy Kaplan - Fighting for the Victims of Domestic Violence

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 19:29:32 GMT

The daughter of a holocaust survivor, Kathy is a self-professed learning-junkie who must have drunk the spirit of volunteerism with her mother's milk.

Originally a secondary Maths/English teacher who spent most of her teaching career in North Queensland working with Aboriginal and Islander adolescents, Kathy has spent the better part of her professional life working in the fields of educational management and fundraising. She now runs a charity as a volunteer to make a difference to Victorian women and children fleeing extreme violence in Victoria.

A six-time breast cancer survivor, Kathy has been a passionate presenter advocating for breast cancer research and specialised in supporting young single mums facing their breast cancer journey. She had the sad privilege of sitting with several such women during their last hours and minutes.

Kathy is passionate about her involvement in inter- and intra-faith work based on her conviction that, as one human family, it is possible to produce something good for the whole of humanity when we're respectfully united in and through our diversities. To that end, Kathy is an active participant in the school tour teams in few synagogues, at the Jewish Museum of Australia and with the Jewish Christian Muslim Association.

Kathy is highly involved in her religious community having been President of Temple Beth Israel; the Chair of the Education Committee and the Secretary of Progressive Judaism Victoria. Kathy also serves on the small team of volunteers who prepare the dead for burial.

On Australia Day 2011, Kathy was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for her work in the area of domestic violence and also for her work in the Jewish community and, in October 2015, Kathy was honoured with the prestigious Ron Castan Humanitarian Award for lifetime achievement.

And, in 2020, Pro Bono Australia named Kathy as one of the the top 25 influential people in the Australian social sector in 2019.

Kathy is the very proud mum of three adult children and the adoring Safti (grandmother) of two little boys.

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Peter Singer - No fear of controversial thinking

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 19:20:18 GMT

Journalists have bestowed on Peter Singer the tag of “world's most influential living philosopher.” They are probably thinking of his work on the ethics of our treatment of animals, often credited with starting the modern animal rights movement, and with the influence that his writing has had on the development of effective altruism. He is also known for my controversial critique of the sanctity of life ethics in bioethics.

Several key figures in the animal movement have said that his book Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, led them to get involved in the struggle to reduce the vast amount of suffering we inflict on animals. To that end, he co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now Animals Australia, the country's largest and most effective animal organization. Peter and his wife Renata stopped eating meat in 1971.

He is the founder of The Life You Can Save, an organization based on his book of the same name. It aims to spread his ideas about why we should be doing much more to improve the lives of people living in extreme poverty, and how we can best do this.

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Celeste Mergens - Removing the stigma around "Secret Women's Business"

Tue, 23 Jun 2020 16:00:00 GMT

Mark Balla from The Smallest Room speaks with Celeste Mergens, the founder and CEO of Days for Girls. She has led the organization since its beginning in 2008, bringing twenty years of nonprofit and business management experience to the organization. She holds a Master's Degree in Creative Writing and Literature and audited a second in Global Sustainable Development. Her “can do” team-building approach has inspired thousands of volunteers and social enterprises around the world. Days for Girls is a two-time Girl Effect Champion, won the SEED award for gender equity and entrepreneurship, and was named by the Huffington Post as a ‘Next Ten' Organization poised to change the world in the next decade. She is a sought-after speaker and has been featured in Oprah's O Magazine, Forbes, and was recently named an AARP Purpose Prize Award winner, a Conscious Company Global Impact Entrepreneur of the year, and Women Economic Forum's Woman of the Decade. She loves being with her family when not traveling the globe. She is married to her best friend Don. Their family includes 11 phenomenal children (5 by marriage) whom all support Days for Girls, as well as 15 grandchildren, 4 foster children, and 4 foreign exchange students, and many beloved friends who have become family around the world.

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