Let Your Life Speak: Alice Owen
Tuesday 13th March
Doors open 4.45pm
Talk to begin at 5.00 pm with drinks to follow
Venue: The Arts Centre
Bookings: reception@sidcot.org.uk or 01934 843102
Let You Life Speak is a series of early evening open seminars hosted by The Centre for Peace and Global Studies at Sidcot School intended to open debate and discussion on contemporary global issues. More than just a collection of ideas, these talks are examples of ideas and values in action, the term let your life speak is usually taken to mean “Let the highest truths and values guide everything you do.”
This informal evening is designed as an opportunity to engage with the speaker, their work and the values that shape their life.
About Alice
Alice Owen grew up in the 1970s on a maize and dairy farm near Limuru in the highlands of central Kenya. In this area of good soils and high rainfall close to Nairobi, young people could rely on a good education to earn a salaried job in the capital. Environmental issues were not on the agenda and Alice could never have foreseen the direction her life would take.
After a series of administrative positions in local banks and a hotel, she had a chance interview that changed her life. Within a matter of months she was managing 80,000 acres of pristine wilderness in Tsavo, an area once infamous for man-eating lions and now home to Kenya’s largest elephant population. She was now living and working among people at the other end of the spectrum, living in great poverty and in constant conflict for their survival with large mammals. They hunted wildlife to sell the meat and cut trees to burn charcoal to sell at the roadside. Not out of ignorance, but through lack of alternatives. These experiences brought her to appreciate the value of supporting children’s education, not simply for imparting knowledge, but as a means to an alternative existence not based on the destruction of natural resources. Alice went on to work for an international conservation charity and that took her to other wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the conservation effort, where she continued to the construction of schools and the sponsorship of promising young people.
Her life took another change of direction when she emigrated with her family to the UK in 2010. After taking time out to raise a young family, she has been a wildlife volunteer, environmental science student, organic food certification expert and will shortly be completing a BBC-supported MA in Wildlife Film-making.
Alice’s unexpected story gives hope for conservation in the hands of Africa’s own people. She hopes the next chapter of her story will allow her to combine her Kenyan roots with her international experiences to keep working for the harmonious co-existence of people and wildlife, before the opportunity has passed.
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