George Wright

Male

Turin, Italy

Italy

Profile Information:

Primary Social Change Interest

Peace, Social Justice

Why are you interested in the Gandhi-King Community?

I feel I've been led to your community along many different paths. Born in 1946, I grew up in the English Riviera, but I was unhappy there as my old father never wanted a child. At 11, I was given a free place at a boarding school, which I left to work in London offices at 16, feeling alone but free to do as I wanted. I began to read a lot, and Colin Wilson's "The Outsider" led me to read everything I could find by Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Gogol, Kuprin and other Russian novelists. I've never felt such solitary joy.
I studied philosophy and political sciences at Birmingham University, where I heard Malcolm X speak at the interdenominational student chaplaincy. I felt I'd crossed an irrevocable line in my life. My teachers included Geoffrey Ostergaard, a gandhian anarchist, and Nigel Young, an early pioneer of Peace Studies.
I was blacklisted for helping lead a student occupation in 1968, and became involved in the social struggles of the 70s, surviving on dole money and casual jobs, but could never settle down. When I I found a chance to work in Turin, in 1989 i jumped at it, even though I didn't know any Italian.
I fell in love with Turin, Italian and finally, my Italian wife, though it took me 15 years to find her. During that time, I became involved with the Humanist Movement, and began a data bank on international development and Africa.
For 3 years I've been working online as a volunteer for the Human Rights Awareness Raising Campaigners in Sierra Leone, and with an Italian friend, we created the website HURRARC.org . This led me to your community, because an Indian student wants to go to Sierra Leone now to do research on child soldiers, and I wanted advice from Dr.Vibhuti Patel, who has written on mental health.

Website (commercial websites are not allowed):

http://HURRARC.org

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