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DAME ANITA RODDICK

Dame Anita Roddick, the ethical entrepreneur and environmental campaigner who founded the Body Shop, has died. Her death is an enormous loss and leaves the world - especially the marginalised - in a poorer state. Anita was the first Chair of Peace Direct.

She took on the big issues of our time, and did it boldly. She went to the root of poverty for rural women, and gave them dignity and income by buying their products for the Body Shop. She was someone who realised that she could use her influence and energy to make big changes, and she did.

Anita was the first Chair of Peace Direct, and she loved what we are doing. She coined the phrase that has become part of our lexicon, "Peace Direct offers an action plan for those opposed to war. It is the civil rights movement of the 21st century”. She held the deep conviction that each person has it in their power to make this a better world, that we have the tools to do so and that this is no time to sit around not doing it. We shall keep trying to follow her example.

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