Spreading Love and Inspiring Change: The Pauline Long Journey

Join me for an illuminating exchange brimming with compassion and wisdom as we journey with the legendary Professor Pauline Long. An overwhelming force for good, Professor Long’s astonishing list of accolades, including the AUGP Nobel Peace Prize, is a testament to her tireless efforts in fostering peace and promoting humanitarianism. Let your heart be touched by her endeavours like providing basic educational resources to village children and creating a safe haven for women in Kenya. This is your chance to learn about her compelling initiatives that put unity and mutual support at their core, breaking down barriers of race, gender and more.

As we navigate through the second part of our discussion, prepare to be inspired by Professor Long’s mission of spreading love and uplifting young women worldwide. Learn about her innovative projects aimed at providing sanitary products and creating sustainable job opportunities. Coach Mikki's inspiring message will motivate you to celebrate and contribute positively to your communities.

 This conversation is set to awaken your spirit and inspire you to extend a hand of kindness to fellow humans.

We look forward to seeing you succeed! - www.KeepOnSharing.com - Code - KOS

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Hey, I'm Coach Mickey and thank you so much for joining us, and for those of you that join us on a regular basis, I am so glad that you do, and for those of you that are joining us for the first time, come on in to make yourself comfortable. I am so glad that you had an opportunity to stop by and see our guests today and I am really excited. I'm very honored and thrilled that she took an opportunity out of her very, very busy schedule to be with us today. And for those of you that reach out to me on a regular basis and have always been in my corner to help us with a lot of charity work and other things that we've done, you guys are really, really in for a special treat today and we're going to give you an avenue that we're going to be able to reach out, as I would say, across the pond, because she's in London to be able to help her with some of her things that she's working on. So I'm going to just read a little bit about her bio and I'm so excited to have you with us today, Dr Pauline or, excuse me, Professor Pauline Long.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Professor Pauline Long is an AUGP Nobel Peace Prize recipient. She is a multi-award-winning serial entrepreneur, SUGA Philanthropist. Excuse me, I am going over my words and I'm going to tell our friends. Right now it is 9 AM for her in London and it's going to be for me in the United States.

Speaker 2: 1:43

I believe you're still awake, oh, josh.

Speaker 1: 1:49

She is the presenter and she has been listed on Black Women in Europe's Powerlist, named the most outstanding woman of the year, europe's most powerful woman for changing many, many lives through the BEFFTA and Global African-American of the year in 2022. She's also been honored in the UK Parliament as one of the 100 most outstanding Africans. She is a graceful humanitarian, a peace activist and most celebrated African woman in Europe, with 18 Lifetime Achievement Awards and over 355 awards given to her for her endless service to the society of selfless support that she gives to charities, the humanitarian projects around the world, and she's been awarded for many special lifetime achievement honors by the President of the USA, joe Biden, and for being a strong advocate for human love, commitment and bringing communities together. Professor Long has been named by the NELA Academy Awards as a phenomenal leader for five consecutive years and honored.

Speaker 1: 2:59

She does not take lightly and is committed as a servant leader, and I know the list just goes on and on, and this is why I really wanted to have you on with me today, because the amount of charity, work and what you do and how you stretch across the globe is just absolutely amazing. So I'm going to let you just tell our circle of friends, what you're doing and how we can help. So thank you so much for being with us, professor Long, I appreciate you.

Speaker 2: 3:31

Thank you so much, coach Mickey, for having made. It's an absolute honor. I mean, it's quite late over there at the moment 1 AM and you're up just so you could do this podcast with me. I really don't take it lightly. Thank you so much, and I'm a very simple woman.

Speaker 2: 3:51

First, let me just start by saying that I am very simple, but I also recognize that I'm a servant leader, the most important. I recognize that I was born to to serve not only people close to me or people known to me, but people I don't know. So most of the charity work that I do, most of the people that I reach out to, are people that I have never met, people that I have changed their lives, and they send videos and they send emails to say thank you for all funds that I've paid, school fees for elderly women that I regularly support every month, but I've never met them. But to me, I think that humans, we are related and I think that we were born to be there for each other. Whether I don't know you, whether you're not my blood, whether you're not my race, whether you're not my gender, I want to be there for you if I can. So I have been embarking on charity projects since I was a teenager. I'm 47 now, so that's so many years and I remember as a teenager we went round to schools in villages to just provide books and pencils and pens and rubber to kids that didn't even have it, and for me that was a big deal. That was the beginning of you can do something small that can change someone's life in a very, very big way. And so I carried on and to date I have supported over 30 charities.

Speaker 2: 5:49

Charities that range from supporting people with disabilities or women that have been abused, or supporting the youth and encouraging them to become entrepreneurs. And the one particular one that I'm now close to my heart that I want to get into is modern slavery and sex trafficking, because I realized that these two things are a menace in the world, but they have really taken over. So I really want to get involved in these two, whilst I'm still behind the scenes, supporting women to be able to find for themselves, especially women that have been abused, to let them know that it's not the end. I bought land in Kenya recently. I'm building a shelter for women.

Speaker 2: 6:48

I don't want to call it a refuge center. I would want to call it a creativity center, even though it's a place where they will come and gather and, you know, meet and talk about their challenges. But it's also a centre where they will come and learn and, you know, become entrepreneurs, become self-sufficient, be able to put food on the table to their families. It is a place where elderly women, if they're lonely in their homes, then they can still come here and meet other women and come together and just be one. So that's one of the big projects I'm embarking on at the moment to build this huge, huge, huge centre. And of course, I cannot do it, you know, by myself. I will need support, a lot of support from you know, well-wishers around the world and from you as well, coach Mickey. I'm sure I can count on you.

Speaker 1: 7:47

That's why we are here.

Speaker 2: 7:51

And I'm sure you know, maybe one of the conference rooms we can name it after your name Coach Mickey Conference Room, you know. So we just want women to be inspired by other women as well. Those women, even though they're in a village, they can be inspired by women from different parts of the world, like yourselves. So it's about linking this women together as well with people like themselves that also inspire so many. I admire what you do. You know you're out there spreading the good news about what other people are doing. We live in a world where hate is going viral. Hate has become something that is verified, something that people think it's normal, and it's going viral. So when somebody like yourself and myself is giving love to other people and, you know, trying to make sure that, okay, if hate can go viral, then love too, for humanity can go viral. So, you know, with everything I do, I think for me the bottom line is the love for humanity. That's my purpose, that's my mission.

Speaker 1: 9:09

You know you, I mean, I've seen some of the things that you've had an opportunity to do, you know, because I've made it just from knowing you this short time. And and first of all, I want to back up. I'm like you, I'm an unobtrusive giver. I'm glad to be that. I, you know, I can just do things people don't have to know. So maybe, instead of coach making, we could do circle of friends.

Speaker 1: 9:33

So I think, no matter where you are in the world, whatever culture you're, you are a part of, like you said, it doesn't really matter. It's the same same situations, the same things that are happening, you know, and we have, we have an opportunity and I think sometimes I'm going to say is for humanity, we should have a responsibility to be able to help and take care of those that really don't have a direction or don't have the opportunities, or maybe don't have the financial needs, or even those situations may go, you know, in a different direction that they didn't ever anticipate, ever in their lives, you know, and that puts them. So to know somebody is, you know, giving them a helping hand, that that truly does care. I mean people like you, that that spearhead these, these events and get people together and raise the funds and make it happen. You know you're the gift in the world that that you know does these things and, whether they know it or not, that it's from you, the fact that you know it and it happens, they know it, and how people feel is, is just an incredible, incredible thing to give. And someone like he was is not easy to find and I that's why I really wanted to connect with you and bring you to our circle of friends to go.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Okay, well, what can we do? What can we do to help you? For you know, because if you said it takes a village, it takes people to together to bring things, and you know, whatever we can do on our end and I can do on my end you know I'm here, the door is open. So you know you're involved with a lot of other charities and I was reading you work with a lot of young women that you get sanitary pads and other things for for these guys. Tell us a little bit about that, because you know, as a woman, these are things we're like. You know we deal with it and you don't think about it, but then you go somewhere else in the world and it's like for what we take for granted isn't necessarily easy for somebody else. Yeah, can you believe it?

Speaker 2: 11:44

Can you believe it? What we take for granted, that's right, what we go to the supermarket and just pick up for maybe one pound or two pounds somewhere in the world, this girl cannot go to school. She will miss school because she's on her periods and she cannot afford sanitary pads. She will miss exams because she's on her periods, because she cannot afford sanitary pads. She will miss going to school to socialise with her peers because she cannot afford sanitary pads. You know, going on your periods, it's not a disease, it's not an illness. She shouldn't be missing school. It's a way of life. These are basic needs. And so for me, the campaign I started, a campaign called For Me, For Her. So it means that when I go to the supermarket to buy one sanitary pad for myself, then I remember that there's a woman that needs, there's a young girl that needs sanitary pads as well. So then I will spare some change on the side. So I've done that with my circle of friends and you know we are constantly raising funds and buying sanitary pads. Again, we're looking at long-term solutions, not short-term solutions. So where they can actually manufacture their own sanitary pads, they can make them, you know. So we need to buy them sewing machines and they can make their own reusable sanitary pads, and it means it will also create employment for them as well. So, yeah, we are looking at long-term solutions, but that is again one of the courses very, very close to my heart.

Speaker 2: 13:45

As I say, I get involved with so many good courses that I don't remember, I just go, I just keep doing. If you bring it up in an interview, then I'll talk about it, but otherwise there's too many. There's too many to pinpoint. You know, all the way to India, I support orphans, you know, and it's a desperate situation that we are in in this world. So many, many, many, many, many, many, many young people need help. There have been positions that it's not their fault If you're an orphan. It's not your fault. You don't have a mum and dad, but still you need to be able to eat. The society needs to be able to look after you. Society needs to be able to take you to school. They need to see you through all the way until you become an adult and to a point where you too can give back to the society as well. So it's about encouraging many of us to find good courses and just support it.

Speaker 1: 15:01

And that is so important. Kids are my heart. I love working with kids and you're right, they deserve to be able to grow into a life that they can thrive and feel safe in. And you're right, there's a lot of things out there that need to be addressed to help them do that, and these are all things that we know happen. But you need to really be more aware and see and it doesn't take much to get involved to help, like you said, whether it's just to give, whether it's your time.

Speaker 2: 15:40

It doesn't take much to take a child off the streets. I don't like to call it street children. I started years ago. I started a campaign called Shouts Campaign. It was a campaign to help remove children that lived on the street, help remove them from the street and house them and also just provide basic needs. Children living on the streets and children called street children what kind of society, what kind of wild do we live in where we want to brand children street children? You know, it just didn't make sense to me and that's still going on until now. So we still have children that live on the street. So it's really, really important that some of these things, that a reduction is not enough, we should go for full elimination. You know, when we put heads together, when we put hands together, but, most important, when we put our good hearts together to help where we can, then we become victorious.

Speaker 1: 16:53

Kindness has no boundaries and that's why I was excited to be able to connect with you, because, I mean, you do things you know as much as you can here in London and wherever you street you know you're reaching your hands across the globe. You know I do things here in the US, but we're really doing the same thing and it really doesn't. There's such an avenue and a way to be able to collaborate, you know, and pick up those new sounds.

Speaker 1: 17:26

Yeah, I know we all have a mission to make this world a better place. You know it's just one step at a time. So you know and again I don't want to keep you because I know your time is so valuable but, wrapping this up, what can we do? I'm going to put all the links that you're going to send me you know that'll be into the description of the YouTube video and the podcast. So if anybody wants to reach out, they can do that. But you know what's the words of wisdom. You know for a circle of friends that if they really want to get involved, what can they do?

Speaker 2: 18:05

I mean, I know, as I say, I know already, you know we all have human love in our hearts and I just want to encourage anybody out there, absolutely anyone out there, that feels like they have three hands.

Speaker 2: 18:28

You know you have one for yourself, one for your family and one for the person that you have never met but needs your support.

Speaker 2: 18:36

If you feel like you have the three hands, then I really want to welcome you on board to you know support. You know all the missions that I get involved in and you know, with the goal that, yes, we are making a difference in someone else's life and there's a ripple effect if we change in life of an orphan and then in the end they also have their own families and their families have their own families. So we have actually changed life over whole generation. So for me it's important whether it's just one person, and I know sometimes people look at it this way and they say, oh, you know, I don't have much I can't give because I don't have much, and I'm always say that much that you don't have that little that you have on your plate. You can just share a little corner of what you have on your plate and you don't have to help dozens or thousands of people. One person at a time is enough.

Speaker 1: 19:40

Yeah, my favorite quote is Anne Frank. No one was ever poor by giving, and never. It's one of my favorite quotes and of all people. From Anne Frank, you know, I just and it's it just tells you I mean, and it's true and grateful, you know, be grateful, be grateful that you can have clean water, be grateful that you can go to the store. You know, just and just having that gratitude makes you also aware that you can, like you said, you can give a little bit here. Every little bit makes a difference, every compounds. If everybody just did a little tiny bit, it compounds into something here.

Speaker 2: 20:25

Yeah, and not to see it as a handout. Never, ever see it as a handout. You're not handing out. You're giving somebody a handout yes, you're helping them get up. It's never, never a handout, you know, because I think some people feel the guilt that I'm just giving a handout. No, it's not, you're not giving. You're giving somebody a handout, yeah, you know, to go and start a new life or to carry on with their life from where it posed, because some people's lives pose and they don't know where to go. Yeah, and you showing up, you showing up at their doorstep with that small gift. They will carry on. Yeah, so it's always a handout.

Speaker 1: 21:15

I appreciate you so much and I am so again. I'm so grateful that you took the opportunity to come on and out of your busy schedule and I know today you've got a lot on your plate and you're doing a lot of stuff today and I want to thank you again for a happy birthday. I mean, she took a teacher. It's her birthday today. She still came along. That's how she was. I know, I know I'm so happy, so I want you to celebrate you. You need to celebrate you, and I'm sure you. I'm sure you're going to do a million things for everybody else, but take five minutes to celebrate you. I'll try. I'm going to celebrate you right now. I wish you a happy birthday.

Speaker 2: 21:56

Thank you so much. Thank you, I'll try my best to celebrate, you know, but all I need is prayers. All I need is prayers, and I appreciate you know anybody watching right now. All I need is your prayers. You know, that's it. That's a gift you can give me on my birthday.

Speaker 1: 22:15

Well, thank you again for being with us today and I'm going to make sure that we share everything that we can through my avenue and whatever you need, my door is always open and I'm just I'm just a phone call away or an email away. Whatever. Whatever you need, please let me know I am there for you, to help you with it, what we can. So thank you again.

Speaker 2: 22:40

Thank you so much, coach Miki. I really do appreciate you know that you took time out to speak with me, especially at this late time. You know on your end. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.