social entrepreneur | Resonance FM Podcasts

Famous for serving six balls at once on a professional court, under arm serves, and speciality shots including the ‘power shot through the legs’, ‘the lob through the legs’ and ‘the drop shot’ which bounces back over the net due to excessive backspin tennis impresario Mansour Bahrami is not to be matched. At the launch of his book he talks about his extraordinary rise to stardom via homelessness in France and the singularly harsh treatment he received as a child on the tennis courts in Iran.

BIBA (The British Iranian Business Association) organised the evening in Summer 08 as part of their public service programming. Fari Taydayon from The Energy Deployment Company and Bez Ghazian review the event at the Hilton where Bahrami was speaking.

The show features classical music played by Haydn Dickenson: piano imitates and transcends santoor in the ten minute piece ‘Tariq 1″ from the album ‘East’.

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Camila Batmanghelidjh (daughter of the renowned Iranian doctor Dr Batman: cure by water) is a psychotherapist and founder/director of Kids’ Company.

Born in Tehran to prosperous Iranian and Belgian parents, Batmanghelidjh went to public school and is severely dyslexic. She did her studies using a tape recorder instead of pen and paper, received a first class Honours degree in theatre and dramatic arts, then a Masters on the philosophy of counseling and psychotherapy, two years of child observation and a course in art therapy at Goldsmiths. After four years of psychotherapy training she worked with children as a nanny, and discovered her talent.

Batmanghelidjh used her mortgage repayments to set up The Place2Be, a psychotherapy and counseling service to children in schools. It is now a national project and serves in excess of 20,000 children a year.

For ten years Kids Company has survived due to the support of charitable trusts and businesses, twice Camila re-mortgaged her flat for Kids Company’s lack of funding. Camila won the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2005. She has written Shattered Lives: Children Who Live with Courage and Dignity, ISBN 1-84310-434-2 and other papers. In 2006 alone she was nominated in ‘The Good List ’06’, of exceptional people and appeared at the Conservative Party Conference and was made Woman of the year.

She curated two major art exhibitions, Shrinking Childhoods at the Tate Modern in ’05 and Demons and Angels: Does it have to be this way? at Shoreditch Town Hall. Lastly as testimony to the widespread interest in her work, Camila appeared on Desert Island Discs in October, 2006 and talks here to Fari Bradley about the company, the children and the things that make the work necessary, accompanied by one of the many that Kids Company has helped.

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