Impossible is a Dare

by Cooley, Ben;

  ‘That’s an interesting idea, Ben’, they said. ‘Let’s have a think about it and meet again in two weeks.’

  Rob and Marion listened to our idea. I mean really listened. Rob suggested I put something down on paper, that I clearly present what I thought this could look like. But as you already know, I’m a big-picture guy. I had no idea about how we could make it a reality. First, I thought everyone would do it for free. No-one would want payment, which would be great! We could make some money and we could give it to some of the charities working in the area of human trafficking and that sort of thing. Clearly I had a lot to learn. But time waits for no-one, and two weeks later we were back sitting with Rob and Marion chatting through the idea.

  Our two kids were very young at the time, and when I say young I mean Deb had literally given birth to our second daughter a few months before. She was exhausted. And so like any parents, we had to arrange this dinnertime very carefully around their sleep patterns, especially as we wanted to have a serious conversation. So both the kids were asleep, and we had about 45 minutes to have this whole conversation before all hell broke loose.

  So there we sat. Ever the optimist, I was fully anticipating that Rob and Marion would agree to organize it and I would go back to my vocal consultancy. They sat down; I gave them their coffees and sat down with mine.

  ‘Yes, we think we should do it’, they said.

  ‘Wow’, I thought, ‘they think we should do it. This is Rob and Marion White, man. They think we should do it. That’s amazing.’

  Then they interrupted my mental fist-pumping with these words:

  ‘But we think you should lead it.’

  Suddenly my mind filled with a million excuses. I’m not a leader. I’m not capable. I’m just a 26-year-old lad from the north east of England for goodness sake. I’m a dyslexic opera singer, not an event organizer. I wouldn’t really even call myself a communicator. It’s amazing the excuses that you can come up with in those moments.

  I had fully expected Rob to say: ‘Right. Thanks for the idea. We’ll take it from here. Goodbye’, because to some degree that’s what I’d tended to see modelled by some of the leaders I’d crossed paths with throughout all streams of life. Not Rob and Marion. This seemingly simple conversation is one of the key times that someone has believed in me and actually modelled true leadership; one of the times when I saw leadership and thought: ‘That is how I would like to be.’

  Although I was the kind of kid who liked to prove people wrong, in the two years building up to this moment I’d been so focused on my weaknesses that I’d utterly disqualified myself from doing anything significant. I was sure my motive would probably be wrong, my attitude would be wrong, my character was not right yet. I’d always think that things weren’t going to be possible; I’m not going to be able to achieve my goals and my dreams. So even when this vision was deposited in the depths of my soul, I still believed it was someone else’s and not mine.

  I felt so absolutely empowered when Rob White responded with: ‘No, it’s yours; go and do it and we’ll help you!’ Rob, the great leader that he is, was able to see past all the labels I’d put on myself, all my limitations and doubts. He looked past them and just looked for the potential in me: ‘Ben, what you have got to realize is that if we waited until we were perfect, no-one would do anything.’

  I often wonder whether I would have had the guts to hold on to this vision if they had shut me down in that moment. I was passionate about it, sure. But they were my leaders and I respected them; if they had laughed it off or encouraged me to forget the arena and consider a smaller venue, I sometimes wonder where Hope for Justice would be today.

  Another side to the story

  Rob and Marion White, co-founders of Hope for Justice

  It all began on 1 December 2005 when I (Marion) was sitting in a Spring Harvest management meeting in Uckfield, Sussex. A well-known British Baptist minister called Steve Chalke spoke about founding something to be called Stop the Traffik and showed a two-minute video about child trafficking, tracing the children’s journey from Africa to the UK. At nearly 60 years old I didn’t know anything about human trafficking, but as I saw the immense injustice unfolding before my eyes, I felt a stirring within me: I knew I had to do something. The words that came into my head, clear as day, were: ‘You will be like a pebble dropped in a pond; leave me to sort out the ripples.’ You may or not believe in a God but, for me, it felt as if it was from him. It was a prompting to do something, an invitation to take a risk.

  On my return to Manchester I spoke with my brother, Paul Field, a Christian musician, who amazingly was two months into writing a musical about slavery in the past and in the present day. Over that Christmas I spoke with others in my family about the issue of modern-day slavery, and in the end eight women joined me in a trip to Mumbai in October 2006 to witness for ourselves the massive problem of human trafficking and particularly the work that an organization called Oasis was doing out there in India.

  Needless to say, that trip changed my life. Not one of us came back unchanged. Returning to the UK, I knew I had to do something to bring the travesty of human trafficking to the attention of many others who, like me, may have been completely unaware of it. I decided to do a tour of England, together with my brother performing some songs from ‘Cargo’, the musical he had been working on, and taking the women who had accompanied me to India to put on a multimedia presentation to raise the issue of worldwide human trafficking but particularly here in the UK.

  The first venue on our tour was Manchester Town Hall, amazingly given to me free of charge by the Mayor of Manchester. When I spoke at our church about the plans, we asked a number of people to get involved. In particular we were looking for someone to help stage-manage the event in the Town Hall. At 26, trained as an opera singer, Ben Cooley was the best offer we had!

  It was clear to us – probably to everyone – that Ben had been deeply impacted by what he had seen and heard at the event. And shortly after the tour had finished, he and his wife, Deb, came to see me and my husband, Rob. Ben was passionate about seeing his community – in particular the church – rise up and take a stand against human trafficking. He wanted to book a large venue, preferably Wembley Arena, and call the church to action. Rob and I did try to persuade him to think a bit smaller than Wembley, but in complete faith – or maybe madness! – we booked the NEC in Birmingham for 8 November 2008. The first ripple was happening but it was a bit more like a tsunami!

  I (Rob) have been a leader for many, many years; more than I’m going to say! What I love is seeing the potential in people and, if I have the chance, to help that potential develop. I could see Ben’s faults (though I won’t grass on him!), but I could also see drive, passion and a longing to do something really meaningful. It seemed as if that energy was not being recognized, so when the opportunity came to see that drive and passion released and focused, I counted it a great privilege to get alongside Ben and walk with him through the whole journey of Hope for Justice until now.

  People gave me the chances when I was young so I’m a firm believer in getting out of the way and encouraging the next generation. The more that Hope for Justice developed, the less Ben needed to turn to me for help and advice, although in my role as chairman of the board for many years and good friend of Ben’s for even longer, we always kept close. So the great thing was that Hope for Justice was not about me but about watching as Ben grew and grew in wisdom and stature. And what a leader he has become! I can still see some faults (I haven’t got rid of all of mine!), but what I see in Ben is an innate gift of leadership that operates on many levels. And to what purpose? To seeing many, many victims freed from the prison of slavery and helped to retake their place in society as free men and women.

  Those early days of planning our event were a massive adventure. The vision was huge; the arena seemed huge and so the budget was huge! How grateful we were to those who stood with us as we formed a planning group, people such as Viv and Tony
Jackson, who stood so closely with us up until recently, and Martin Warner, who still serves on the board. Operation Mobilization helped us to a great extent, as did The Message Trust. We worked so hard at asking people if they could possibly help us through practical hands-on stuff as well as financially, and many responded so generously. The final cost for the event was near to £250,000 and, as we drove into the NEC car park on 7 November, we realized that if people didn’t turn up the only collateral we had was our house! It was a scary thought but it was one we had to embrace. We believed in the event. We believed in Ben, but more importantly we believed in the heart behind it and in what the soon-to-be-named Hope for Justice was longing to achieve.

  * * *

  Chapter three

  Tobias and Elena’s story

  Tobias and his wife Elena saw what looked like some great job opportunities online. As a result, they applied for the roles and moved with their family to the UK. When they arrived with their young children, the accommodation they had been promised turned out to be squalid and totally unacceptable for kids. The smell was overwhelming, the walls were dirty, the rooms were dark and the place had barely any furniture inside.

  During their first day working in their new jobs, Tobias and Elena quickly realized that what they thought was a legitimate opportunity, what they thought was a chance to better their family and build for their future, was in reality something very different. Soon they were treated like animals.

  After working for four weeks, both Tobias and Elena were paid just £5. Five pounds to feed their entire family. For their family’s sake they decided to leave, but try as they might they could not find alternative work. Every possible avenue closed. They became desperate, to the point where they felt they had no choice but to return to the same ‘franchise’ run by their trafficker, which had various jobs across the country.

  They were soon given work to do, but the unreasonable ‘expenses’ deemed by the trafficker to be legitimate grew into a ‘debt’ to their employer. The debt spiralled; their captors became increasingly violent. They demanded to be repaid, but with so little income this was impossible. They were trapped. Physical and verbal abuses were continual; Tobias and Elena were pushed, punched and shouted at, until one day Tobias was stabbed.

  Sitting in hospital, Tobias had every reason to fear further reprisals. Too terrified to make a formal police complaint, he felt compelled to return to their life of exploitation. Two months later the family were reached by the frontline service of an organization trained by Hope for Justice. Its team had been trained in how to spot the signs and to identify such situations and called in our experts.

  When we met them, Tobias and Elena had nothing but their children and a few possessions in their arms. Hope for Justice arranged for immediate safe accommodation and worked to meet the family’s most pressing needs, including a good meal and plenty of milk for their smallest child.

  Tobias and Elena had experienced year after year of fruitless labour, debt and violence. They had been promised a dream that fast became a living nightmare. But now they are free and starting to build the life they deserve.

  Gathering momentum

  Over the following months, Rob and Marion introduced me to a load of people. I travelled up and down the country sharing the vision of what we wanted to do. I was so naive. But in some ways, these days laid the foundation for the man I would become. The vision was gaining momentum, the excitement was contagious. Very quickly we started building a team of people in support of the project. People were meeting people, introducing them to me, sharing the vision, sharing the passion. We were getting some incredible people on board, such as Rob Allen.

  At the time, Rob was working for a major multinational organization and overseeing budgets of hundreds of millions of pounds. We asked him if he could help with the finances for the event. Of course he could! He was handling budgets far bigger than ours. But he wasn’t captivated by the figures; he was captivated by the vision. And there were other great individuals who wanted to support us, such as Chris Dacre.

  I think that was probably the first time I was really nervous about meeting someone who would later become a member of our team. As I sat waiting to have tea with Chris, I couldn’t help but think the same thought over and over: he lives in a different world from me. I knew about tights and make-up; he knew about ledger lines and commercial property! But as soon as he arrived it became apparent that we did have one very key thing in common. Chris has always been passionate about the abolition of sex trafficking. When we started talking it was clear he felt really strongly that he needed to do something to fight against this evil. We shared the same hope, the same vision. Then Chris introduced me to another guy who would soon become an important part of the Hope for Justice story: Tim Nelson.

  When we first decided to put on this event, a lot of people were quite impressed by the size of our ambitions. Tim was the first person I met along the journey who thought: ‘Well, what we need to do is make it bigger! We need to do it better! We need to push this to another level!’ And I thought I was a big thinker! When I would eventually go to hire the arena, the original quotes were as much as £80,000; I’d spent a lot of time managing to get this down to about £40,000 after much toing and froing and many meetings. I was preparing to go to the board with great anticipation of them giving me a round of applause and hearty congratulations. Before I could announce my achievement, Tim spoke to me and said: ‘I bet we could get it for £10,000.’ What?! So then the board sent me back to ask if we could have it for even less. That’s Tim Nelson! He’s got this unbelievable belief in the good of humanity, even in the face of evidence that shows otherwise. Everyone needs a Tim Nelson in their world. Yes, you need people to tell you stone cold facts, but you also need someone to pull you up into a different way of thinking. And sure, I didn’t get it for £10,000. But you know what? Tim inspired me and pushed me on, and we all need someone like that in our lives.

  Tim Nelson is also the guy who decided what our event would be called; well, he and a small Anglican church called St Andrews! Tim had heard about this church and that they were running a small youth event, getting ten or twelve people together on a Friday night. They were calling this event The Stand. The name clearly had an impact on him. Soon he started telling me how he thought it would be an amazing name for a much bigger event and that maybe we could use it for ours. It made sense. We weren’t just gathering people to raise awareness; we wanted to prompt action. We wanted people to do something. We could ask them to take a stand, to take The Stand against slavery. It was perfect. The Stand wasn’t just an ethereal name for an event; it was actually something that would mean something to people.

  Not content with naming our event, it was also Tim who would later come up with the name for our organization. In the same year we launched there was an initiative called Hope 08 launching. Tim thought it would be a great idea to tie in with that. But we didn’t want to be hope. We wanted to hope for something. Justice was the thing we wanted to see and so Hope for Justice was born.

  With Chris and Tim and many other exceptionally talented individuals getting on board, the momentum was growing. I had a vision of an arena and now – excitingly, scarily, unbelievably – more and more people were beginning to share that vision too.

  Initially I didn’t know which arena we would fill. We didn’t originally pick the NEC and, actually, the first time I was really hit by what we were trying to do was when I walked round another arena, in Manchester. It was huge, this massive open space. Obviously, being an opera singer I couldn’t resist letting out a bit of Verdi; the acoustics were fantastic! But I’ll never forget the moment when the manager said that in order to hire this building, for the numbers we were talking about, we would actually need to bring in our own toilets. It was another detail I hadn’t imagined, but sure, fine: we’d bring our own toilets if we had to. What was that going to be? A couple of hundred quid? Nope. Not even close, more like £30,000. ‘Maybe we don’t need toilets
after all’, I thought. ‘Perhaps we could just ask them to hold it in or go beforehand.’ That was my ‘fear’ moment; that’s when I realized what we were doing. Up to that point it felt as if we were building up to do a really big PowerPoint presentation. It wasn’t until I walked round the arena that I thought: ‘Ah, this is actually quite big. This is why not many people do this!’ But we’d come too far to go back now.

  And so after weeks of travelling and speaking across the UK, gathering a growing number of people to share the vision for an event that would allow us to tell the hidden stories of slavery, I had abruptly remembered that it was time to book the arena. Dialling the number of the NEC Arena in Birmingham – the seventh-largest exhibition centre in Europe – I waited for someone to pick up the phone. And then they did.

  ‘Hi, my name is Ben Cooley and I would like to book the arena please,’ I said.

  ‘OK, sir. Where are you from?’

  ‘Originally, the north east of England but now I live in Manchester.’

  There was a long pause on the end of the line.

  ‘No, sir,’ the voice on the phone finally broke the silence, ‘I meant which company are you from?’

  ‘Oh, I need a company?’ I said, ‘I’ll write that down.’

  Clearly I knew nothing about booking, organizing or hosting an event. The conversations I had with the sound and lighting guys, for example, were equally hilarious: