How does change happen? Does it primarily come from decisions taken by presidents and the powerful, or is it something more subversive that springs up from underground?

Having the chance to return to Cairo brought back happy memories of good friends from many countries, walking by the Nile, and unbroken sunshine in a place I loved dearly.

But there was always more to life here than that, and with the focus of this trip meaning I have spent most of every day visiting people who are working with Egypt’s most vulnerable communities, I have been firmly reminded of how relentless a struggle life is for the majority of people living here.

And yet, as always, my work gives me the incomparable privilege of seeing hope emerging quietly but with strength in unexpected places. In our current political situation I have been thinking about how we might have something to learn from these people who have many years’ experience of continuing to work for justice and change in uncertain and turbulent times, and I believe their experience shows us some principles about how we might model the compassion and justice we seek to advocate for:

Get to know those you’re fighting for…

I visited a group of nuns who have been living and working amongst the zabaleen people on the outskirts of Cairo (above) for many years. Life for this community who make their living from sorting through and recycling Cairo’s rubbish remains difficult and dangerous, and poverty is pervasive. These nuns have been consistently present in the midst of this. By virtue of being there, they have built strong relationships and respect, and can notice and respond to deeper, more complex needs – currently they are working to develop anti-addiction programmes and providing catch-up education for working children.

… And stay there

I’ve also been challenged by the persistence and commitment of those I’ve met this week in Egypt, not just caring when it’s popular but in it with those they’re working on behalf of for the long haul. One project which began by supporting a single deaf child now works with children and adults with a myriad of different disabilities and at the same time still seeks to do the best for each individual to develop to their full potential. Alongside this practical work they advocate for the rights of people with disabilities in Egypt.

Work with people who aren’t like you

The most powerful forces for change I’ve seen are those which bring together people who you would never expect to find together in the same room. This week I met an interfaith, inter-generational, child protection committee which included children themselves as well as representatives of the local health department, education and government ministries who were seriously working together to improve children’s access to their rights in this one community.

Make space to hear the voices of the marginalised 

Over several years this child protection committee is now seeing significant change and impact through being there, being committed and working together. The children themselves have learnt about their rights, been trained in advocacy, and have gone out into their community to understand the needs of children. Over the last seven years, among other things, they have had a huge impact in improving the working conditions for the many children involved in child labour in the local workshops and factories; one teenage boy said,

“We learned how to deal with workshop owners, and now they will listen to a child; now we can deal with anyone.”

The impact of children themselves speaking up for change and seeing it happen is immense, and slowly but surely, change is coming in this community.

And so: what if, rather than responding in kind to acts and words of intolerance, we could break this cycle of violence with responses that embody the very compassion for which we advocate?

While it would be a wholly undeserved grace, I suspect a president is more likely to be disarmed by accepting a cup of sweet Syrian tea and a welcome from those he fears, than by a petition signed by 2 million against him; or that speaking gently and recognising and putting aside my arrogance to really seek to understand the reasons why someone can think so differently to me, might make more difference than sharing a facebook post ridiculing their point of view.

While the need to challenge unjust policies and practices remains critical and political engagement is essential, I have a feeling that the quiet stories of genuine compassion like those I’ve witnessed in Egypt this week in fact also have significant power to transform systems and policies. Beginning from the actions of people like these Egyptians, and like you and me, little by little something totally new is created from the seemingly insignificant threads of our actions weaving together. Let’s be part of this story.

Donald Trump Jr.’s analogy comparing refugees to skittles this week seemed to set a new low in the level of disregard for human life it reflected, and provided a frightening indication of the attitudes fear can legitimise.

I was glad to see so many people responding to show why this is not an appropriate analogy – especially those pointing out that if in fact these skittles represent men, women and children who we can save from horrific situations of conflict and violence, then we should in fact eat as many ‘skittles’ as we can because of the value of human life they represent.

And yet even this response has something lacking when I think about the Syrian people I’ve come to know and work alongside here in the Middle East.

Undeniably the situation in Syria is continuing to deteriorate and is something that people should be rescued from; what’s happening right now in Aleppo clearly shows that. Stories I heard this week from Syrians working with children in conflict-affected areas – stories of parents suddenly lost in explosions, children who have seen things they should never have seen – mean that yes, we need to do all we can to bring peace and an end to this conflict in which the most vulnerable continue to lose the most.

But still, there is something missing in the counter argument to the ‘skittles’ analogy which casts us in the west as the selfless heroes who take action to save these ‘helpless’ people, despite the potential cost. Certainly selflessness and a willingness to disregard the cost are good things for us to aim for, but when these qualities are all on our side, this doesn’t even come close to telling the whole story about the people I’ve spent the last few years working alongside here. In fact, selflessness and courage are qualities I have seen much more clearly in these men and women than in myself.

This week I spent three days with the Syrian child friendly space teams we work with in conflict-affected areas, and once again was overwhelmed by their compassion, heart and willingness to remain for the long term in dangerous places when there are so many other, easier, much less costly choices they could have made.

One of them living in an area currently often under bombardment explained, “A good thing about that is you learn to face death and not to fear it.” Day by day, month by month, children are loved, valued and cared for when no one else is there. And this is the courage not of a moment but a patient, persistent, tenacious courage.

The week before this, I met Fares*, a young man who had left Aleppo only one month ago, and told me in a matter of fact way how his role in Syria in the last few years has been working to give aid to people in the city, going into ‘hotspot’ dangerous areas to find out people’s needs and help to provide support – risking his life on a daily basis. Fares joked that having this job was the reason his English is so good, since he had plenty of time to study as he didn’t feel like going out of the house in the evenings after spending his whole day going out into dangerous places.

Fares is hoping to complete his studies, but in the meantime has taken on a teaching role in a non-formal education project for out-of-school Syrian children in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Many Syrians are partnering with Lebanese churches and NGOs and working as teachers or volunteers in projects like this.

In another of these schools which I visited a few weeks ago, it was clear that there is a significant impact on children and their families. Children who were out of school for several years now know how to read and write, they have become less isolated, and it’s clear to see that joy and hope are being restored through the commitment and passion of these volunteers.

Far from being a homogeneous group of helpless “refugees”, these are in fact the most courageous, the most persevering, the kindest, the least selfish group of people I have ever met.

To continue the inappropriate analogy, I would be happy to have a whole bowlful of them.

Rather than us needing to selflessly eat the skittles to rescue people in need, we should recognise that in fact these are people who, after all they have been through and with all that they bring, are people we could instead choose to welcome and receive as a gift.

It’s not just that refugees are ‘people not skittles’, true as that is – their identity also does not primarily lie in the label ‘refugee’. In today’s world, where fear is allowing lies to pass for truth, selfishness for logic; having the opportunity to know men, women and children from Syria, hearing their stories, developing friendships, living life alongside one another – this could be a significant way for us to reclaim our humanity.

I wish we were in a place where there was no ‘them’ and ‘us’ – but until then, I’m becoming more and more convinced that we need them as much as they need us.

*names changed

Yesterday morning I was taken aback by quite how deeply sad I felt to wake to the news that we are leaving the EU. My sadness stemmed in part from the realisation of quite how separate we can become from people who seem to think differently from us; as the day wore on, I had the same conversations and saw the same expressions of feelings of loss, disappointment and astonishment. Missing were the voices of the almost equal proportion of people who voted the other way. A referendum in its nature is designed to split people in two, and this one appears to have been particularly effective at catalysing and strengthening division.

I’m especially saddened by this sense of increasingly sharp and painful division since recently I’ve actually been seeing incredible examples of the exact opposite of this phenomenon.

In Lebanon, we’ve started a network for churches who’ve begun informal education projects for Syrian refugee children, a much needed response where more than half of Syrian children remain out of school. Lebanon isn’t a place where working together across churches and denominations always comes easily, and in fact it feels somewhat miraculous that people are so excited about meeting together and helping each other.

Closer to home, I spent the two days before the vote at the NSPCC’s annual conference. I was shocked by the huge and rapidly growing scale of the issue of online child sexual abuse; in the last year alone, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) removed 68,000 separate URLs containing images of child abuse. But what was encouraging was the scale and depth of the response to this issue; sitting on the discussion panel were representatives of the police, IWF, Google, and an academic, whose united response has made the UK now one of the most difficult places in the world to access child abuse images.

In both of these situations, we’re witnessing people who shouldn’t or wouldn’t normally choose to connect with each other, overcoming that which could divide them because they recognise that the issues they are faced with are worth tackling, and can only be solved, together.

In our current situation I think it’s important not to become closed off from what we might be tempted to see as a group of ‘other’ people totally not like ‘us’. It seems to me that one of the factors at the heart of the EU debate was a sense of anger and distrust because of a growing distance between politicians and people, a sense that decisions are made which don’t have the best interests of the most vulnerable at heart, and a frustration that it feels that there’s little we can do about it. Oliver James, an author and child psychologist speaking at the NSPCC conference commented,

‘There has to be a total change in our society… we need to become a nation that puts wellbeing ahead of greed.’

I hope that however we voted, we can choose to look beyond the pervasive rhetoric of fear, anger and hate, and begin to untangle the knots and find one another again. I hope we can make a choice to connect with people we wouldn’t normally interact with, and take this opportunity to listen, talk, understand, reach out, and not simply close off. I would like to choose to remain engaged, remain caring, remain hopeful, and remain in relationship.

The most compelling example of remaining in difficult circumstances I’ve known in recent months is that of our team in Syria running a child friendly space in an area that is deeply affected by conflict and insecurity – they have chosen to stay and continue to engage, where many others would have left. And one year in, we are seeing remarkable evidence of impact in the lives of the children they care for day in, day out.

To me, this team of young people represent hope in a situation that many see as only filled with despair. Let’s not let this week’s decision take us away from focusing on the issues that are really important and really demand our attention, thought and action, and let’s look for ways to remain connected and work together to ensure that our society is one that is good news for those who need it most.