by Cooley, Ben;
Another side to the story
Patrick Thompson, Rend Collective
I met Ben the year The Stand was happening. It was back in Northern Ireland and Ben and Debbie had been asked to help lead this youth weekend at my church. We clicked straight away, just chatting away about personal stuff. But then on the next day – the Sunday – Ben was speaking at the church. This was the first time I heard his heart for Hope for Justice. From then on I got loads of opportunities to hear of Ben’s passion and vision for its work. Looking back, these initial times we hung out must have been right in the lead-up to The Stand, but you’d never have known that Ben was having severe financial difficulties or skipping meals and that sort of thing. I never knew that about him. And you’d never have been able to guess because he was just so excited about life in general! He was also incredibly driven towards the end goal he had in mind.
What Ben had spoken about at our church had great impact, but it was actually later, during the three years that followed our first meeting, that I was able to hear the details about Hope for Justice and the work they were involved in. We had spent a lot of time together since we had met, but this one occasion Ben invited me around to his in-laws’ house in Northern Ireland to talk specifically about Hope for Justice. He told me the brutal, gritty truth about human trafficking. It was really hard to listen to. He then shared his vision for getting artists involved to help promote the cause. At the time, Rend Collective were at the start of our own journey and so weren’t really playing a lot of shows. What he said had so much impact on me that I wanted to see something change, but I didn’t really understand what my involvement would be. I played in a band that had sold fourteen records (to our family!).
For a long time, then, our involvement was merely a friendship. It was 2016 when we first began to partner Hope for Justice in a professional context. We were playing a UK tour in May, and I think for myself and the guys in the band it had always been a bit of a dream to support the work of Hope for Justice. At this point in Rend Collective’s journey we had a reasonable degree of influence, and we wanted to use that influence to make a difference in other people’s lives. And so when both Ben and the band were in Nashville we decided that Ben would come on our UK tour. It was a great opportunity for us to share the platform we have with something we really believe in. We love to make time in our gigs to talk about important causes like the one Hope for Justice fights for; we believe highlighting these kinds of issues is a huge part of worship.
Worship is what we are called to do with our entire lives. Our desire is that we wouldn’t just gather people in a room to make them feel good, make them have a good time and make them dance and smile, though these are all great things! We want the worship to have a lasting impact, to be a practical thing that will be lived out beyond that night. Every night, what is really cool is that the benefit of the evening is not for the people who are sitting on seats in that room but for everyone outside the walls. We want to help mobilize people, as Ben does, to demonstrate the hope we have in practical ways.
The fact that we make time for organizations like Hope for Justice as part of our gigs is because we don’t want people leaving thinking that worship is just what we do with our voices. And so each night after the first artist, I would get up and briefly introduce Ben, and he would get up for about 18 minutes and knock it out of the park! But one of the sad things is that not everyone wants to hear about these issues. We received a reasonable amount of opposition. That is one of the reasons I respect Ben as much as I do. I hadn’t really thought about it, but this is not an issue people enjoy hearing about. We probably got complaints every day saying it was an inappropriate thing to be talking about at that kind of gathering. This was really difficult to deal with because we feel we have a responsibility to the people who come to see us. Perhaps they were trying to shield their kids from this kind of thing and tell them in their own time. But at the same time it was so frustrating because we just felt like saying: ‘This is a real issue and it is one we have to tackle. This is not an issue that we can just ignore and hope somebody else will sort it out. This is something that really has to be spoken about and hasn’t been spoken about enough.’
So often it was difficult. I think Ben did a fantastic job; he didn’t water it down but I don’t think he ever went too far. It’s not really going to change until people know about it, and that’s what our hearts are set on, that’s where Ben’s heart lies, to make a difference. As a band we are definitely into supporting this, we are definitely into giving our time to help be a voice for this.
* * *
Chapter six
Magdalene’s story
We arrived at the location where Magdalene was held. My colleague Emma led me into the room. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a developing country where you can see poverty everywhere, but there is another thing that hits me every time I step into a place of extreme poverty: that not only can you see it, you can smell it. It’s difficult to describe but it’s distinctive: the smell of exploitation. Though the family hadn’t been there long, the smell was strong; it clung to my clothes.
When I walked into the room I saw a group of children, not far off my own children’s age. Their backs were against the wall, their heads between their knees. It turned out they had been sitting this way for hours. The image of those 5-, 6-, 7-year-old children with their backs against the wall, surrounded by filth, in the middle of the day is now burned into my memory. They had been robbed of hope, they had been robbed of their dignity, their aspirations.
They were silent and nervous; I turned to Emma and said: ‘Look, what can I do? I need to do something practical. What do you need me to do?’ So she asked me to go and get them some food from the local supermarket. As I went round the aisles, I threw everything I could see in the trolley: clothing, food, supplies for the baby, the lot. Anything that could even begin to help meet their needs. I took it all back, but in the rush I’d forgotten to get something hot they could eat right away. Emma, responsible for coordinating this case, sent me out again. I and another colleague, Isaac, went out to get pizza. The wait for food seemed to take ages. I will never forget starting to feel hungry and then thinking what the children must be feeling.
When we finally got back I put all the food out on the table, fully anticipating that the children – who were still there with their heads between their knees – would run up and get the food. But they didn’t. They didn’t move. I turned to Emma and said: ‘I don’t understand! Why aren’t they going to get the food?’ She said: ‘Ben, every night the trafficker would eat his dinner around the table, laughing and joking about his day all the while.’ She pointed at them: ‘These nine people would be sitting on the floor like animals, waiting for him to finish his meal. Then once he’d finished his meal, he would grab the scraps of food off the table and throw them on to the floor for the children to eat like animals.’
Suddenly I wasn’t hungry any more. I had to leave the room for a while. I had tasted something in that moment. Do you know what it was? Perspective. Throughout the whole of our organizational journey I thought we’d had our own share of hardship, but I’d never had to sit on the floor; I’ve never had anyone throw scraps to me on the floor. These children were malnourished. And not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. That moment, that perspective, stayed with me.
Our team went to see them again after this rescue. The kids were running around, the baby had big chubby cheeks and the teenagers had baked the team a cake to say thank you for giving them back their freedom. Their mum once said to our team: ‘If it wasn’t for Hope for Justice, my children wouldn’t have survived. My children wouldn’t have survived!’ No matter how hard it’s been, it’s moments like that, the moments in which you see hope, that keep you going. That was the moment that life changed for them, the moment they were no longer exploited, the moment they were free.
What now?
I sat at my desk. The room felt simultaneously the
size of an aircraft hangar and a broom cupboard. Cavernous and claustrophobic. Then the phone rang. I picked up:
‘Hello, Hope for Justice. Ben Cooley speaking.’ There was a slight pause.
‘Wow. Did I call your direct line?’ the voice asked.
‘Kind of,’ I replied. ‘It’s our only line.’
The dust had begun to settle following The Stand. All those sleepless nights wondering if anyone would attend; all those car journeys travelling from church to church sharing the vision of the event; all the coordinating of booking bands and speakers; all of the preparation – the blood, sweat and tears – was now over. It was over. The event had been a success; many organizations had benefited; children vulnerable to human trafficking had been sponsored. We had done it. But what next?
It was the Monday following the event, and I was sitting at a wobbly desk with just one phone for company. It was one of the loneliest moments I’ve ever experienced in Hope for Justice. For months and months I’d been surrounded by people, talking to the team every day. I’d been driven by appointments and decisions and tasks. I’d been running on adrenaline, people and caffeine for a long time. And now it was just me. Those people were no longer around me, those appointments no longer booked. And although the ‘hard part’ was seemingly over, those days were challenging. I was sitting there, trying to work out what on earth I would do going forward. The Stand had sparked passion and generated purpose, but what should I do with it now? How could I create something that harnessed the passion and purpose to help bring an end to modern-day slavery? How should I shape this? At that very moment we had 300 Act for Justice groups who were campaigning and fundraising locally all around the country and many more people giving to us. The event had put passion in people’s hearts, but now we had to give them something practical to do with their hands. There were so many questions in my mind, but there was no-one to share them with. I was in an office, alone, with a really wobbly desk.
These days taught me that growth has to be incremental. I started in a basement and we had now moved to this small office. Change is not sustainable when it happens too quickly. It has to be measured. But although difficult, these days were also incredibly special. In many ways the founding principles of Hope for Justice were born during these days.
I’ve always known that integrity is one of the fundamental foundations of leadership. I saw it in my father and I’ve seen it watching other leaders I hugely respect. Losing integrity destroys credibility. When you hear of CEOs who cheat their companies out of money, or people who say they’ll deliver something that they don’t, it burns credibility. We had 300 people sign up to set up groups. I didn’t want to lose integrity in their eyes. I wanted these amazing people to buy into the vision, to join us in the movement, to stick with us, be a part of the family. So I went silent on making any promises. I didn’t start shooting my mouth off, saying ‘We’re going to the do this’ and ‘We’re going to do that.’
I began working with Rob Allen and the board, wrestling with these big questions. There were people around me urging me to mobilize those who had signed up. But I went into slow mode. Why? Because I knew I had only one chance to start the movement and if I over-promised and under-delivered then we would lose everything. The Stand was merely an advertisement for a movement that was coming and a celebration of other organizations that were already established. But in those next few months, I really felt the importance of it. This year was pivotal to seeing our vision become a reality. In a letter to Lady Middleton, William Wilberforce wrote that he felt the importance of the abolition of the slave trade but also totally unequal to the task allotted him, though he wouldn’t positively decline it. In 2009, I could totally relate to that. I saw the importance of the subject. I felt completely inadequate to the task allotted me but there was no way I would positively decline it. There I was, conscious of avoiding losing credibility and conscious of maintaining integrity.
In those days our vision centred on India. The experience I had in that country never left me. We knew we could support the work out there. And that was what was driving us. I wrote a proposal for our trustees suggesting that we could become a conduit for the organization working against trafficking in India. I did the presentation. I shared the vision.
And the trustees said no.
I was utterly devastated. I couldn’t believe it. But you see, here is the interesting thing: they saw greater potential than I had. I’d presented basement thinking; their vision was arena-sized. They pushed me forward. I’ve surrounded myself with people who aren’t ‘yes’ people. That has been one of my greatest assets. They’re people who are with me, who are for me, but they’re always willing to raise the bar, to expand the vision and challenge safe thinking. And that was the moment when they said they thought we needed to do something in the UK: we needed to do something about Emma’s story and the countless others like her.
My initial reaction was that I didn’t want to do it. I wanted the easier path, the safer option. But deep down, in the core of my being, I knew there was something right about this. This was the vision that would shape the movement. This is my country. This is where I was born. These are my people. The passion began to grow, not just for the issue but for the nation. I wanted to see an end to human trafficking in the UK. Within the board there were lots of opinions about how we would approach this. Some were for aftercare, some for advocacy. While I knew they were right in focusing on the UK, I also knew that rescue was the right vision for Hope for Justice in that season. We couldn’t do everything, but we could do something. We got external help to assist us in adjusting that vision so that everyone was on the same page. It is a difficult balance as the CEO of a charitable organization, going with the vision you feel is right and submitting this to your board and allowing them meaningful input. If you’re a young leader reading this and you struggle with submission, you may think you have all the right answers. Let me tell you: you don’t. I certainly didn’t. One of the best and most important characteristics of a leader – of any age, but particularly young leaders – is teachability and humility.
Persuading our board to believe in this common goal was not achieved by force. It was through listening to them and hearing what their passions were and then proceeding with an attitude of humility. You sometimes need a fighter. Winston Churchill was the right leader during the Second World War but not for the peace that followed. Only a few months after the war ended, he was replaced by Clement Attlee. What I learned in those days was that I couldn’t just fight, like I’d fought with sheer passion to make The Stand a success. I needed a different Ben Cooley to sit in that boardroom. I needed to be smarter, more refined. I needed to hone my communication skills. I needed to share reasoned arguments for what the outcomes would be and why we were best placed to achieve that, to remain teachable and humble.
The defining moment came when I introduced our trustees to ‘Slavery Boulevard’. Imagine it costs £100,000 to build a house and we have enough land to build six houses, but we only have £100,000. If each house costs £100,000 to build, do I start six houses or do I complete one house? Once that first house is built, it can then generate income to build the second. Once the second is built, we do the same to build the third, and so on. Imagine this is Slavery Boulevard. The first house is prevention, the second house is rescue, the third house is advocacy and prosecution, the fourth house is aftercare, the fifth house is second-phase aftercare and the sixth house is political lobbying and the national infrastructure.
I presented this to the board. I told them we only had enough money to build one house, so which house did we want to build? If we try to build all six from the start, we would quickly drain resources, run out of cash and end up with six partly built houses. So which one do we want to do? We had already started rescuing victims in a small way. We had employed our first team member focusing on rescues and he was already seeing results. It strengthened my argument to the board because we already had a track record. It wasn’t mu
ch but there were results. Maybe if we put more results behind this and built a team, we really could see some significant impact. It was unique. No-one else was doing it. We came to a unified and focused vision. We would rescue victims of modern-day slavery in the United Kingdom.
* * *
With a shared direction in mind, our team grew. The tiny office we had started in was simply no longer big enough. So one of our team generously lent his garage for his staff to work from. Glamorous, right?
But being in two locations made it difficult to sustain a united culture. Even so, I understood that you can be in the same room as someone and not be united. For example, I can be in the living room with my kids and not really ‘with them’, perhaps because I’m on my phone, doing emails or my mind is just somewhere else. I am not present. Proximity does not equate to unity. It was then that I came to a difficult realization: I didn’t like our organization.
Even within the same building there was division between us. Some people could no longer see where they fitted into the vision of the organization because we hadn’t built the right kind of culture. I discovered then that you either set the culture or the culture sets you. I’d focused so much on the vision that I forgot about the culture. Why you do something is hugely important, but how you do it is just as important. I’d given so much attention to what we did and why we did it, that the how we did it had got lost. Clearly, something had to change.