EP. 222 — Choose Love with Josie Naughton

IWEIGH-222-20240708-Josie Naughton-Transcript

Jameela: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. I hope you’re well and I’m going to give you a heads up. This is one of the more intense episodes I’ve had of this podcast, uh, in a while and that’s because there’s so much going on in the world right now and I get messages from all of you all of the time asking me what you can do, how you can be helpful, how you can feel empowered in all of this, how you can donate, who you can raise money for. It’s so hard to know because you never know which organizations are dodgy, if the money’s ever actually going to get to the people you’re trying to help. You don’t know where to start because there are so many organizations. And so I wanted to bring you one that I really trust, uh, one that I’m an ambassador of, one where I know the founder personally and have done from long before she started Choose Love, which is the name of the organization we’re discussing. And they are able to fund hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of on the ground grassroots organizations doing the most extraordinary work. And in this episode, [00:01:00] we talk about all the crises that are happening, the ones that are in the news and the ones that aren’t in the news either anymore, or they haven’t made the news because people don’t seem to care about certain countries that are suffering, and we just have a very candid chat about it all, and it’s not about politics, this is about human beings.

This shouldn’t be political. People are not their governments, people are not their leaders. It is insane that it is something we even have to take pause over as to whether we agree with every single thing that the leaders of certain countries do when we’re seeing people, when we’re seeing children, innocent babies suffering and starving on our watch all over the world. And so this episode, while full of some harrowing statistics, is actually incredibly uplifting because it’s about the strength of the human spirit. It’s about the amazing human beings in this world doing work that is so deeply inspiring. It’s about true optimism for humanity and it gives you a tangible way to help and to know exactly where [00:02:00] your money and support is going.

I did an episode about this organization a few years ago where I was mostly telling the story of the founder so that you could really understand the context of this organization. The episode was called Josie Norton and you can find it and it’s honestly one of the most inspiring listens I’ve ever heard. I felt, uh, shit about myself afterwards being like, well, I’m really not doing enough, but it’s amazing to know there are people who are doing more and I found it very inspiring and galvanizing to make sure that I do more and maybe it’ll have that same effect on you. But today’s episode is a call to action for the emergencies that are happening. It’s a way for you to help, and it’s a reminder that there is so much more good in the world than evil. There are so many more of us who are decent, who are kind, who care for one another, who would go out of our way for a stranger. It’s just that the worst people are very fucking loud, and we tend to be more quiet, and it’s time that we are no longer quiet, and that we get up, help, and support each other and don’t feel [00:03:00] shamed out of doing so. So if you’re interested in what’s happening all over the world, because it’s hard to digest all of the chaos online, we break it down. Uh, we give cold hard facts. Again, it’s not political. It’s just about humanitarian work and aid and need. And I think you will find this episode helpful and hopefully really inspiring. I love her. She’s such a clear, amazing speaker and an incredible human being who has truly risked and dedicated her entire life to this incredibly intense and terrifying and heartbreaking work. But she’s full of hope and so should we all be. And so this is the excellent Josie Norton from Choose Love.

Josie Norton, welcome to I Weigh. How are you?

Josie: Jameela Jamil, it’s very nice to be on I Weigh. Thank you for having me. I am doing good. Thank you. How are you?

Jameela: [00:04:00] Yeah, I’m good. I’m good. I’m really happy that you’re here and I wanted to be able to rush you onto the podcast this week because you’ve been doing so much important work and I feel as though it is my duty not only as your friend but also as an ambassador of your organization to make sure that we spread the word about the important work that you’re doing. And so many people message me every single day asking me how they can help and having you on today gives me an easy way to direct them. And so before we get started talking about what it is we need help with, can you explain what Choose Love is?

Josie: So Choose Love is an organization that started nine years ago almost and the mission of the organization is to serve forcibly displaced people all over the world, close the gaps in services for them, and build a world that chooses love and justice every day for everyone. And we do that by raising money. We are so lucky that we have hundreds of thousands of people [00:05:00] all over the world who donate to us. And then we identify community based local organizations who are on the ground, we prioritize the organizations who are led by the communities themselves. These organizations are doing everything from literally pulling people out of the rubble after bombs, rescuing people in the ocean who are making perilous journeys to try and find safety, building tents and camps, distributing food, building safe spaces for women and children, providing legal support to reunite people with families.

We, we support people right the way through their journeys. And as you said, you know, this year there’s, there’s never been more need than, than I’ve ever seen since starting the organization nine years ago. The world is, you know, really, it’s really in a difficult place and there are so many people in need.

Jameela: Yeah, and I, I can’t believe nine years later we’re having this conversation because when you first started Choose Love, uh, you and I were close, I was there at the beginning, and I thought the world could never get any sadder or scarier than that moment, and I thought we’d all learned such a huge [00:06:00] lesson from what was happening, and it just feels as though the chaos has only multiplied.

Can you, can you talk to me a bit about the ways in which the people that you help are served just so people have an understanding of exactly what the money goes to?

Josie: Absolutely. One thing, just in thinking about that comparison between when the organization started and now, when the organization started, there were 65 million displaced people in the world, and we’re now at 117 million displaced people in the world over a nine year period.

Jameela: Jesus Christ.

Josie: And it’s estimated that that number will rise to a billion by 2050, predominantly because of climate change. So the kind of needs that we see on the ground that our partners are dealing with are, you know, from the very, very most basic. So in places like Syria or in Gaza, people are literally having to be pulled from underneath the rubble, they need emergency medical care, people need food, they need [00:07:00] water, they need a safe place to sleep. Often that there, it isn’t possible to create a safe space so people are in, in tents. People, when people are displaced and they have to leave their home, they’re leaving everything behind. They’ve only got what they can carry on their back. So people don’t have, you know, they don’t have changes of clothes. They don’t have diapers. They don’t have sanitary products. They don’t have anything. So there are organizations who are building camps, trying to make sure that people have got access to water, fixing wells, putting in taps, all those kind of things, distributing the clothes that people need, making sure that mothers can give birth with a doctor present, with a midwife present. People are on the move, so you need to make sure that there are organizations all along people’s journeys who are able to provide those things.

We work with a lot of internally displaced people. So in, we’ve seen as well over the last nine years, a lot of [00:08:00] externalization of borders. So borders get closed and then people can’t leave the country they’re in to find safety. So they’re, they’re stuck in a place and they, they just have to live in these camps for a really long time. So there’s services that are provided in camp. Education, lots of kids don’t have access to school, so at least they can have informal education. Psychosocial support, mental health support is something that’s so important, um, you know. We, we are all realising for all of us how important mental health support is, but imagine if you’ve been through the most unimaginable things known to man, let alone if you’re a child who’s gone through all of those things. But again, when people are still in that situation, they haven’t even got to safety yet. It’s a, it’s a really difficult, very specialised thing to be able to provide. And we work with amazing organisations who provide those services. We work with a lot of amazing community centres, so when people have resettled or they’re in a new city, they don’t know where they are, they don’t speak the language, [00:09:00] they don’t know how to fill in all the different forms they need to do to try and get asylum to enable them to try and get the right to work. They don’t know how to enroll in the medical system in a school. Um, the mother’s, um, or fathers as well, might need to have child care in order to be able to go and find a job, get a job. So amazing community centers that provide wraparound support, lawyers that help people with their cases, that fight them being deported to other countries, reunite people all over the world. Often families get separated and one, one family could end up, part of the family could end up in Germany, another part of the family could end up in the UK or in France, and they’re separated and they need to be brought back together.

There’s a lot of unaccompanied children that our partners work with, so as you can imagine, they need very, very specialized care or they’re at risk of trafficking, of exploitation. We offer a complete variety of services that support people at every stage of their journey. And the [00:10:00] organizations that we work with are just really the very, very, very best of humanity.

Jameela: Yeah, you are the most diligent person working in this sector that I’ve ever come across in my life, which is why I will stand by you until I die. And if anyone wants to hear Josie’s extraordinary story of how she founded Choose Love and her backstory and, and more detail about the organization, then we did an episode a few years ago that you can look up under her same name on I Weigh. And I highly recommend it because it is one of the most humbling and stunning episodes that I have ever been a part of.

Talk to me about some of the greater emergencies going on right now, the ones that are in the headlines and also the ones that aren’t making the headlines.

Josie: You know, I really think we’ve been through so many emergencies over the last few years and there’s kind of like, we often talk about a lighthouse, there’s a spotlight on a [00:11:00] situation for a short period of time. Everyone really, you know, focuses in on it and then something else happens and everyone moves on to that thing and the situation is still going on but it’s completely out of the headlines. And in part that’s also just people can only hold so much, you know, it’s overwhelming when you see how many different crises there are in the world. But, you know, Syria, the situation in Syria is absolutely devastating. There are millions of people in need of support. The funding for all the organizations has been cut year on year. Children are being born in refugee camps. Children aren’t in school. There’s still bombing happening. It’s, it’s a really, really desperate situation. That’s completely out of the headlines. And we ourselves have seen, you know, our partners are coming to us saying they’re having to close medical clinics, they’re having to close schools, because people just aren’t really aware of what’s happening anymore.

Again, Ukraine, two years ago, that was the, you know, at the front of the headlines. [00:12:00] And again, our partner organizations are kind of describing the situation almost exactly the same as it, as it was two years ago. And there is an absolutely desperate need for humanitarian assistance.

Sudan is a situation that I really think is not getting at all enough coverage.

Jameela: And can you explain what’s happening there because it’s fucking insane.

Josie: It’s, it’s crazy. 25 million people are in need of aid. 25 million people are facing acute hunger. An estimated 8. 6 million people have been displaced, and there are 7 million children that are malnourished. And, you know, we don’t, we don’t get into the politics of situations. We’re a humanitarian organization, and in all of these situations, you know, the international community just has a responsibility to step up and do more. And Sudan really does feel like a totally forgotten [00:13:00] crisis. And we’ve been working with organizations who are working with people who have been displaced and crossed into Egypt and also into South Sudan.

Jameela: I, uh, I’ve been stunned by how little anyone’s talking about Sudan, given the scale of this crisis. And I don’t know why we aren’t talking about it enough. Obviously, we seem to have a kind of lens on one crisis at a time, but the numbers are so shocking that I, uh, I can’t really believe what I’m seeing. The videos are so shocking. I mean, the few times they’re able to even circulate whatsoever. But I know you’ve been working on this for quite a long time with grassroots organizations. And I cannot imagine the level of suffering that you must be seeing and hearing about.

Josie: Yeah, it’s really, exactly like you say, it’s the scale that’s so shocking and I, I really do think Sudan, you turn on the news, you, you don’t hear about it, were it not for Instagram, um, we really, really, people just wouldn’t know. And so actually over the [00:14:00] next few months, we’re going to be making a real effort at Choose Love to be spotlighting the organizations who are working on this situation, who are really trying to educate people about what’s going on. So I really encourage people to look on our social media. We always tag other organizations and other pages to have a look at so that people can educate themselves more.

I was just in Egypt last week and visiting an amazing organization called Stars and they’ve been absolutely incredible supporting the Sudanese community who’ve arrived in in Egypt, helping them find accommodation, helping them get all their kind of immediate material need, uh, helping with education. And yeah, I, I visited this space and there are just so many amazing, gorgeous children. And I think so often we, we talk about all these big numbers, when I’m saying 25 million people are in need [00:15:00] of aid, but that’s 25 million individual people, individual lives. And it’s really important that we like focus in and drill down on that because it’s people just like you or I, but just, they’ve just been dealt a completely different hand of cards.

Jameela: It’s so important to humanise these people because otherwise they do just become statistics with no names and no faces that ever get spoken about or remembered and I think that makes it easier for specifically the Western community to look away. I know that there’s also horrors going on, um, to do with people who had to flee Afghanistan when the Taliban came in, who are now being told that they’re going to have to go back because certain countries won’t have them anymore. Could you enlighten us about that?

Josie: Yeah, absolutely. So, particularly from Pakistan, there’s been a huge number of people who’ve been sent back to Afghanistan. And what often happens when there’s a crisis is that when there’s a larger number of the people from that [00:16:00] country who are then displaced and moving to different places around the world, the kind of legal framework that they can access changes and so it becomes a lot harder for people from those countries to get refugee status because countries become afraid that they’re going to have to end up letting in a higher number. Um, and they can become really stigmatized or people find themselves in one country, they can’t get status, they can’t get sent back, but they can’t be sent anywhere else, and they just kind of end up, um, living in this limbo. So when Kabul fell and the Taliban regained power, we were working with so many organizations who were evacuating people.

And not too long ago, actually, I was in Greece meeting with the most incredible women who were um, politicians, who were teachers, who were real academic minds, um, and these women, you know, their lives [00:17:00] were at risk for that very reason, for who they were. Um, and they were, they’re in Greece, some of their other family members have been sent to other places in the world, so they’re, they’re in that legal process, trying to be reconnected with them. They were just saying to me, you know, we’ve had to leave our home, we’ve had to leave everything behind, but then they were saying about the other women and girls who are, who they’ve left behind, who now can’t go to school, whose lives are completely turned upside down, who can’t go outside without their, you know, male guardian of some sort with them. And I just really, I was just so, so struck imagining if that was one of us. And you know, it’s almost like, like day and night, you know, they had, they had been living a life similar to how we were with those hopes and dreams, with the rights to an education. And then suddenly, that’s just taken away. And the [00:18:00] situation

Jameela: Look how insane we went over a temporary lockdown. Like this is, it caused years and years of mental health trauma in children and even in adults and a loneliness epidemic. So you can only imagine that was only, you know, I think maybe it was 18 months in total that we were in and out of lockdowns. I cannot imagine how these people are faring.

Josie: No, I know. And these, I just cannot express how amazing these women were, like being in their presence, they were just so strong and so powerful. And they’re already, you know, they’ve formed coalitions and they’re doing a huge amount of advocacy and spending every day raising awareness about the situation that’s happening in Afghanistan. They are actually part of one of the community centers that we support that supports about 25 different nationalities of women who all come together and use the space. And, um, it’s, it’s amazing. It’s called the Melissa Network. But, you know, they’re just, their hearts are broken for, for their people at home. And I really feel that we all have a responsibility [00:19:00] to, to keep highlighting these stories and, and keep talking about it.

Jameela: Yeah. Yeah. And it also, there’s so much talk, you know, we have an election coming up in the United Kingdom. There’s a huge election coming up, I think in France and, and just all over the world there’s a kind of rise in right wing fascism. And so much of the ways in which these people rise to power is by blaming people who have to flee to safer countries away from where they originally lived and are from, and it is so terrifying to watch the way that the media participates in allowing the governments to demonize the most vulnerable people in the world. Not to say that every single last one of them is a perfect saint, but we are talking about millions and millions of people, so many millions of which are children, some, so many are babies [00:20:00] who have no support, very few chances of survival, never mind the opportunity to thrive in their lifetime, and I’m so shocked to see that so many years in after the first, I guess the first global news of the refugee crisis struck in Calais nine years ago, almost 10 years ago, I can’t believe that that, that same old stigma hasn’t shifted at all, and if anything is being weaponized more than ever. And I can’t imagine what that must feel like for you to go there, meet these people, see the desperation and the fortitude it takes to be able to carry yourself and your family through and then to read these headlines and see the things that people say, see the things that politicians all over the world say and the way that they shift the blame onto these people.

Josie: Totally. And it, it just seems to be this like tried and tested strategy when you’re a government or politician in a position of power, [00:21:00] and you don’t want to talk about your shortcomings and you don’t want to talk about, you know, strategies to make things better. It’s easier to just scapegoat some of the most vulnerable people in the world. And that’s just what we see happen time and time again. And like you say, we’re seeing this big shift to the right globally. And this, this really negative rhetoric is, is being used. It’s being repeated. Different governments are all learning from each other and using the same lines. And what I find so shocking is, you know, they know it’s not true. They know that that’s not the reason that you can’t get an appointment at your local GP. That’s because of funding cuts, but they think that they can, they can say these quite often lies to cover this up and to, to get or keep power. And it just is so upsetting, like you say, you know, these, the people that I have had the great, great, great privilege [00:22:00] to meet over the last nine years are some of the most brave, the most creative,

Jameela: giving.

Josie: Yeah. The most generous, the most giving people. I can’t tell you how often I go places and people really have nothing and they are like, I want to cook for you. I want to, you know, they, they’re just so kind and generous in the face of everything that the world has dealt them. And this is, this is what they are met with. And, you know, there are, there are countless studies that show actually immigration or giving status and asylum to displaced people is actually a net gain for your country. People end up being employed, they end up paying taxes, unlike a lot of very rich people who leave the country and don’t pay their taxes. And the reality is it’s, it’s only wonderful for society. You know, look at, look at London, look at the all the incredible restaurants that we have in, in [00:23:00] London. Do you think any of those would be there if people hadn’t come to live here from all over the world? It all kind of doesn’t really make sense. Like you say, it’s, it’s often, it’s children a lot of the time that are being, that are being used in this kind of, yeah, media war. It’s, it’s devastating.

Jameela: Well, when people push back, uh, against things like what you just said, they’ll be like, well, it’s because the people, you know, who’ve, you know, set up the restaurants, etc, they came over legally. It’s the illegal, uh, migrants that we have the problem with. And it beggars belief for me, and I know you are not someone who wants to be political about this because you are a humanitarian organization, but it’s extraordinary to me as someone from a Muslim country that has been interfered with so profoundly by the West, to watch Westerners consistently act as though these people are a burden, who have created their own problems by themselves, and now are [00:24:00] coming over to steal our resources over in the West, and never acknowledge the fact that the foundation for so much of the chaos that they are running from starts with interference from the West. They go into these countries, they devastate these countries, they destabilize their governments, uh, under the guise of trying to bring democracy to the Middle East, and then they, uh, obliterate any hope that these people have, or they literally obliterate the cities. And then complain when these people need to leave. Where the, where the fuck did you think they were going to go? Where are they supposed to go? They can’t live where you have destroyed their homes. It drives me, it drives me insane to watch Westerners, the arrogance of Western propagandists and, and, uh, pundits when they say these things and they act as though the West is, is civilization when the West is responsible for so much, so [00:25:00] much destabilization, murder, and crime. I, I, I really, I think, I think the world is waking up to that more than ever. But I find it really shocking and to have, like I said, grown up in some of these areas that have been interfered with so much by the West. And to watch the West shrug and point at us as though we’re animals has been really, really staggering. Truly unbelievable. And I really thank you from the bottom of my heart for the way that you tirelessly fight for the people who the media tends to forget about because when it was Ukraine, even though we should still be talking about Ukraine more than we are now, there was so much more shock, horror. Like you see the difference in the way that the government will talk about the people being attacked and displaced. Um, I know that you saw this literally within your organization that, that there’s such a significant difference in the way that white people fleeing are treated compared to people of color who are fleeing. They literally get separated and put in different camps some of the time and treated completely [00:26:00] differently. But I thank you for seeing beyond the skin color of these people and making sure you fight for these people for all of these people and you raise awareness and raise the alarm as to what’s happening to them because the world just has such an extraordinary indifference when there is more melanin in the skin, and I don’t think that anyone can argue with that given the profound difference in the way we respond to Ukraine versus Sudan, which we almost don’t hear about at all versus what’s happening even in Congo, what’s happening in Iran, Iraq, all of these places, Syria, Afghanistan, you, you name it. These are problems that the world often has no idea about, and as someone from this background, it makes me feel like I’m going insane. And, and so you restore my faith in humanity.

Josie: I couldn’t agree with you more. And I, when we started this work, I have to say I was ignorant about how the [00:27:00] world works. And as we started to work in more and more contexts and ask the question, why did people have to leave their home? Like what happened in the country that they came from? And sure, as you start to educate yourself, you see that the West is nigh on always responsible, um, in, in some way. And then I, myself, I’m then like, wow, well, I, I’d benefit from this system. So I, and we have a responsibility to try and do what we can to correct that. And, you know, earlier when we were talking about Sudan, um, and you kind of were saying, why is this not more in the media? I mean, racism is a really big part of that without question. And so often in, you know, different countries that we work in, if you look at the rights that are assigned to people of different nationalities, you can’t help but notice that there seem to be less rights the darker people’s skin is. Um, and that just, you know, that just is [00:28:00] a fact. Um, and it is so important that it, that it gets acknowledged, that it gets talked about, and that it gets fought. And I, I think that those conversations are starting to, to be had more. I think that people are starting to be more aware, but it is really difficult.

For our fundraiser that we did for Ukraine, we raised 16 million dollars, which was absolutely incredible and didn’t come anywhere near meeting the needs. But by contrast, after the Turkey Syria earthquake last year, where more people were in need of immediate life saving humanitarian assistance, we raised 8 million dollars. Um, and that just kind of shows the contrast and Afghanistan, we raised one million so far for Gaza, we’ve raised just over two. And I think it’s really important that we can try and educate people so that the support can get spread more evenly, but not only that, it can really go to where it is most [00:29:00] needed.

Jameela: And speaking of Gaza, you just got back last week from Cairo where you were meeting with organizations who are on the ground trying to help people, as you said earlier, and who are escaping from Sudan and all kinds of other places. But can you tell me about your trip and what you saw and what you most need us to know?

Josie: Absolutely. So I was in Amman in Jordan and then in Cairo in Egypt visiting our partner organizations and other organizations who we will be working with. And it was an utterly devastating, devastating experience, I have to say. My heart broke into a thousand pieces. I’m sure people know this, but just for some context, there are currently 2 million people trapped [00:30:00] inside Gaza, over 2 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. 37, 000 people have reportedly been killed, although it’s assumed that the number is actually much higher. 15, 000 of those are children. There are 557, 000 women facing food insecurity. People have been displaced six, seven, eight, nine times over the last eight months. Each time that they’ve had to move, you know, they’ve lost everything. People are suffering from incredibly severe malnutrition. There is very little access to water. People are washing in seawater. People are having to drink kind of collected rainwater. There is So much infrastructure has been destroyed. Schools, residential areas, hospitals, [00:31:00] libraries, the water infrastructure. So normal life just kind of doesn’t exist.

I met humanitarian aid workers who had recently been inside and you, I can’t really convey the distress that they were experiencing. Um, they couldn’t really find the words to describe the horror and the devastation. I met a doctor who had recently left. He’d been an orthopedic surgeon for 45 years and he was showing me videos on his phone of children whose limbs had been been lost, um, that he’d had to amputate.

Jameela: Often without anesthesia.

Josie: Often without anesthesia, without the right equipment. In fact, it’s been reported that this is the largest cohort of child amputees in history. Um, and he, he kind of broke, he broke down in front of me and said that he just can’t see any more blood. And he has, actually, he [00:32:00] had lost, his home had been completely destroyed and he had gone back to try and find his dog. And he showed me this photo of his house just completely destroyed, but luckily the dog had been in its kind of kennel. And um, the dog was just there, it was like a destroyed house, but the dog was just there behind these bars. It was like a miracle. The dog was called Simba. Um, but it just kind of to, to just illustrate, you know, what people are going through. People don’t have shoes, babies are being born premature, mothers are unable to breastfeed because of the trauma or because they’re malnourished.

Jameela: There are at least 50, 000 pregnant women.

Josie: I believe that’s correct. Yes. And there’s an estimated 19, 000, I believe, children who are orphaned or who’ve lost at least one parent. There’s a new acronym for children who are arriving into hospitals, which stands for wounded with no surviving family. [00:33:00] It’s one of the most devastating, um, situations I’ve ever heard of. And the organizations are facing indescribable, insurmountable challenges, but they are just, I was, yeah, flawed by their humanity and that they are finding ways to get food to people, they are finding ways to fix wells, they’re finding ways to perform medical procedures. Um, they are finding ways to entertain children, they are finding ways to build shelters and tents out of kind of very bare essentials, but it is a, it is a real challenge. You know that at the moment there’s almost nothing going in across the borders. People can’t leave. There is, I don’t want to use the word continuous, but there is very, very regular bombardment, um, that people are facing. Um, [00:34:00] there’s kind of, you know, little things that you wouldn’t think of that I heard a lot of, of just this, there’s the sound of the drones or the planes all the time. And imagine having that every day for, for all of this time. Kids aren’t in school.

Jameela: They’re not sleeping.

Josie: No, that’s nearly a year out of education.

Jameela: Yeah.

Josie: Yeah. It’s, um, it’s a really, really desperate, desperate situation. And we’ve been so lucky that we have been supported by the public to fund organizations who have been, you know, cooking tens of thousands of meals, who have been getting tents in, who have been putting those tents up, who have been providing baby milk, who have been doing incredible jobs providing medical care, rehabilitating hospitals, getting medicines in. And that that work is going to be ongoing and very much needed. And we’re really hoping that, um, we’ve just launched a match fund, [00:35:00] a 1. 5 million match fund called All Eyes on Gaza that will be supporting many of the organizations that I met on this trip, so we’re really hoping that people will support it. So anyone listening, if you can, we would be so grateful for any support that you can give.

Jameela: Josie, I’ve been watching you from the very start of this organization, as I said earlier, and I have, I’ve seen you go through some extraordinary things and I’ve seen you be witness to extraordinary things and be totally harrowed but I have never seen you as shaken as I did when you got the night you got back from Cairo and from what you’ve seen I’ve, I’ve, I can only imagine, I could sort of just. There was something in your eyes that I’ve never seen before as to how shocked you were by the situation. And so I, I thank you for like being able to pull yourself together within two days to be able to have this conversation with me because I don’t know how you manage to digest all of this [00:36:00] information and just keep going immediately. And I know it’s from a place of total emergency, but this work has just never stopped. And I, yeah, I’m, I’m very, very, very in awe of you. And this fund was one of the reasons I wanted to be able to bring you onto this podcast to make sure that people have a way to be able to help you raise that money as fast as possible. Can you tell us exactly where people could go to be able to donate the money?

Josie: Absolutely. Um, and I just want to say quickly that, you know, it’s I, I am really privileged also to do this work and that the humanitarians, the doctors and nurses, the aid workers who are risking their lives, um, to go into Gaza or the, the community who are the workers inside who have been displaced themselves, but still finding the courage to, um, to do this work. They are the true, true heroes, um, and people can support them by going on to our Instagram or any [00:37:00] of our social media, which is @chooselove or on to our website, chooselove.org, and you will see the All Eyes on Gaza campaign and you can click on that and you can make a donation. There is no amount that is too small. And, you know, we really welcome people to put on fundraisers in your schools, put on fundraisers with your friends, you know, do what, do whatever you can. Be creative. Think of ways that you can, you can raise funds. And if you’re not able to do that, then I’ve really asked that people still continue to spread awareness because the situation is ongoing and it’s really, really important that the world’s eyes remain on the situation as well as all the other situations in the world.

Jameela: All the other situations that we mentioned earlier. Yeah, absolutely. And I also just want to be clear, and I can’t believe this has to be said still at this point, but this is not a political moment, right? If you [00:38:00] are, if you have pause as to whether or not you should help the civilians who are suffering in Gaza, this is not a political statement. It’s not a political thing. This is just a humanitarian issue. There are people starving to death as we speak. There are people suffering. There are children being amputated without anaesthetic, like, it’s just, the horrors are unimaginable. This is not about picking any kind of side. This is just about stopping the immediate suffering of innocent human beings, just like you. Just like me. And Choose Love from, you know, October 7th, we’re also making sure to offer support to people in the south of Israel. This is not a statement of one versus the other. This is about everyone remembering that we are all human beings, that we have a duty to each other to protect one another, especially the most vulnerable. And I can’t think of many people in the world more vulnerable than those mentioned in this episode and, and most imminently when it comes to famine, those in Gaza is the fastest rise [00:39:00] of famine that we’ve ever seen in the history of the world. And this isn’t something that we should feel shamed out of caring about. And that does not mean that you care for some people more than other people. It’s just about stopping the, like, intergenerational, multigenerational trauma, which is already set in, but we can make a difference now and we can look back and know that we did something when this happened. And that, as, you know, Josie said, that doesn’t just mean for what’s happening in the Middle East or specifically in Palestine and in Gaza. This means all across the world, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, all these different places, uh, choose love, support people, and also in countries that we didn’t get to mention on this episode. And unfortunately, because of the increasing issues of climate change, there will be more issues all over the world and, and soon the world will become colder, in which case they will need our support more, so if you’re looking for an organization, I [00:40:00] personally put my heart, soul and full chest in front of this organization. They are the only ones that I’m an ambassador of because of that and I, I feel very confident to tell you that your money will go somewhere that will actually make a difference. You’ve helped how many people at this point with Choose Love?

Josie: So the organization has reached 7. 5 million people around the world that we can, you know, directly account for, but that the number is actually probably larger. We’ve supported 400 incredible community based organizations in over 35 countries and that is all thanks to the public, it really is.

Jameela: So thank you.

Josie: And thanks to you, Jameela. You’ve been so incredible in supporting us and, and raising awareness and you know, really this is Choose Love is a movement and it’s every single person doing their bit in their way that enables it to carry on doing the work that it does.

Jameela: Well, I couldn’t mean this more when I say it’s the, it’s literally the fucking least I could do. Uh, I love you. I [00:41:00] thank you for coming on today. I know you’re so, so busy putting out a million fires, and thank you to everyone who’s listened to this episode. It’s not always an easy listen because the world is very intimidatingly bleak, uh, especially now, it feels like. But if there was ever a moment to jump into action, it’s right now. And so go to choose love on Instagram and, and go to chooselove.org. And I will continue to post information about them, but follow them on Instagram to stay incredibly informed and just to feel reassured that there is goodness in the world and there are so many people who want to help each other.

I think one of the saddest things about the, the way the internet appears now is it makes us feel as though everyone’s divided, everyone’s horrible, everyone’s hateful, whereas over the course of the nine years in which I’ve watched you work with this organization, you started this organization, I haven’t seen your hope, I would have thought, I would have expected for your hope to be diminished given [00:42:00] everything that you’ve seen. And yet because of all the amazing workers on the ground that you’ve seen all over the world and the amazing people who are fleeing for their lives that you have met, that you’ve had the honor to meet, you seem as though your optimism is stronger than ever and you have so much faith in humanity. And I think that if we look away, we won’t have access to that same faith. I think we need to lean in and see these people and learn their names and learn their stories and, and see the incredible people who put their lives on the line every single day for others, people that they don’t know, who they may never be able to be thanked by. You know, they’re doing this having lost all of their own lives and families and freedoms. Remember those people, look for them and allow them to remind you that there is some good in this world. There’s more good than evil. It’s just about us paying attention to those people, uplifting them and, and supporting them. So Josie, thank you so much for coming. Is there anything else [00:43:00] you’d like my audience to know?

Josie: No, I’d just like to say thank you so much to everyone for listening and thank you so much to everyone who’s supported Choose Love in the past. And I truly do believe that there, just like you said, there is more good in the world and compassion is contagious and we just all have to lean in. And it’s unbelievable what can be achieved when we, when we all put our hearts and minds together. And yeah, thank you so much for having us.

Jameela: Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh With Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory, and Amelia Chappelow. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show.

It’s such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh, we would love to [00:44:00] hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording sharing what you weigh at iweighpodcast@gmail.com.