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Resolves

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People reflect on how they will do things differently after living with a deadly virus.

In a series of special programmes recorded as the world gradually ‘unlocks’ during the Covid 19 crisis, we hear from people of all kinds, experiencing life on different continents, in different countries, in rural and urban societies, reflect on aspects of their lives and determine ways in which they want to do something differently. They offer up small and large initiatives; acts that give expression and focus to the change they are undertaking. These echo the Resolves that each of us will also make in recognition of our own preoccupations given the charge of life and the proximity to death, seemingly closer, in the presence of the disease.

We hear Resolves that will bring about a greater awareness of the natural world or the decision to provide mobile healthcare to giving school pupils new educational structures. We also hear the frustration of young Zimbabwean Anele Matshiselaa  who sees the terrible deterioration of health and the natural environment but it has nothing to do with Covid 19 – this is the long term drought that has bought the country to its knees and is the cause of people crying that they would rather die of the virus rather than desperate days of contamination and dehydration without water. He determines an important change in his work in wildlife research and management.

Resolvers include Primatologist Frans de Waal (US), Olympic Gold Medallist Sally Gunnell in the UK, Head Teacher Caroline Hodges (UK), International curator Juliana Engberg (NZ) and Environmental Journalist Gayathri Vaidyanathan (India).

Resolves: Resolves: Olympic Gold Medallist Sally Gunnell

Sally Gunnell Olympics 1992

27/06/2020 GMT

Olympic Gold Medallist Sally Gunnell

BBC World Service - Resolves, Resolves, Olympic Gold Medallist Sally Gunnell

Why Sally Gunnell resolves to bring about more kindness - towards herself and to others

Why Sally Gunnell resolves to bring about more kindness - towards herself and to others.

Olympic Gold medallist Sally Gunnell, renowned for her 400 metre win in Barcelona, resolves to bring about more kindness - towards herself and to others.
“I’ve had to move from being quite a selfish person as an athlete where everyone around me was thinking about what I’d had to eat, what massage I needed; everyone was running around me…and in the last few months of lockdown, I’ve been thinking about the adjustments that I needed to make to move from that and to reflect on what being kind really means”.

Gunnell shares some of her insider experience of how to make real change; the importance of a few minutes of concentration each day to allow the  imagination to create the scenarios that will come about.

(Photo: Sally Gunnell of Great Britain celebrates after winning the Womens 400m Olympic Hurdles Final, 1992 . Credit: John Stillwell/ Press Association)

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