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Viewer discretion advised. Themes include suicide, sexual abuse and addiction. |
Sexual abuse. Parental suicide. Drug addiction. Incarceration. Violence. Homelessness. Mental illness. Betrayal. Kidnap. Cancer (times three).
Such tragedies and traumas are seldom experienced by a single person. Their effects are scarring. And for most, irrecoverable. But for James Brett, these experiences have shaped who he is and have been harnessed by him to strive for something better. For forgiveness, redemption and for peace.
Brett founded 'Plant for Peace', a social enterprise focused on bringing peace to Afghanistan through the creation of agricultural cooperatives. It is perhaps no surprise that he related Afghanistan's people, most of whom have also lived lives characterised by poverty, conflict and uncertainty. For over a decade, Brett has been working in Afghanistan to support a country ravaged by war and to bring meaning and purpose to his own life. He went with no bodyguard, no gun and no limits to his ambition.
Brett learned to speak Dari and built relationships across the country. He was able to set up meetings with 55,000 tribal elders to convince them to leave violence and drug production behind them. He has burned several tonnes of heroin. Imported Afghan produce to sell fruit bars in the UK. He met the President, foreign ministers, Nato chiefs, philanthropists, celebrities; approaching each with the humility of a man whose mindset was forged in the long days and nights in solitary confinement and on the streets of Swindon. His outlook on life is hard earned but it's what is making a difference. Empathy borne from experience.
Recovery is not a battle won or lost in a single moment. It takes years of work, introspection and humility. But the quest for peace is indeed worth fighting for. Both for Afghanistan and for James Brett.
James Brett – video transcript
I've been through lots of experiences in my life, positive and negative, but, actually, all those experiences are positive, because they defined who I am and I don't shy away from the bad ones.
I was brought up in a family of five children, I was the second oldest. My parents were quite religious. Grandfather, my father's father, was head of our church. I always used to have to go and do errands and chores for him and stuff like that and he used to preach at different chapels and everything. At the age of about nine, he asked me to tie a reef knot to put loganberry bushes back against, tie them back against the fence where they were growing, and I did the reef knot wrong, so he took me into his rickety old garden shed and beat me with his belt and sexually abused me. He continued to, nigh on systematically, sexually abuse me for the next four or five years.
So, one Sunday, my father said, "Get ready, you've got to go with my father, to another chapel." And I said to him, "I'm just not going" I became hysterical and said, "Go and ask your father what he's done to me." My father came back about half an hour later and said, "Oh, my father's admitted abusing you." Much to the horror of, for sure, my mum and myself that, you know, my father said that, "In the Bible, we have to forgive and forget, so give my father a hug." Which was the last thing I was going to do.
My mother, she became pretty withdrawn, and then, she jumped off a... Jumped off a car park and killed herself.
I felt I'd been let down by the church, by my father, by the police, by society itself, and all the people around me. And I really looked at it like that. It was me against them, them being society in general. Ended up taking loads of drugs. I had to get out of reality, couldn't cope with the day, otherwise, it was impossible. You know, I was aggressive. Anything I saw immoral, I wanted to attack, and if I could make money shoplifting from doing it, I would do it. And so I ended up in Rochester Prison.
When the judge read out the sentence of two years probation, I burst in tears and said, "You can't let me out. Don't send me out there, I want the four years." I didn't want to let go of what I had. That's a pretty dark place to be, when you're crying because they're going to let you out of a prison.
I knew that I had to reintegrate back into society. You've got to stand up and try and take whatever steps you can to better the situation that you're in. One day, there is light at the end of that tunnel and you can get through this. If I can, I believe anyone can.
Felt like a new life was on its way, but I didn't really know what. And then, in October, 1999, I flew to Peshawar, in northern Pakistan. I always found solace in travel. We were walking along and this old man, he blended pomegranates, so I drank this pomegranate juice and it was a crazy feeling. It was almost an instantaneous thought, "This has got potential, this juice." I turned around to my friend on the street, dusty and hot streets of Peshawar and said, "I'm going to make a drink from this." And so, I created the drink called Pomegreat, which ended up in every single supermarket in Britain.
About a month later, I had a mental breakdown. While I'd gone through that psychiatric scenario, I'd lost -- I was CEO and major shareholder of Pomegreat and when I came out of the hospital, my position was gone and my equity stake in Pomegreat had been diluted. So, effectively, lost Pomegreat, so that was quite a loss for me, at the time. Felt quite let down by that, but such is life.
In April, 2007, I was invited to Afghanistan to talk to farmers about growing pomegranates. Being in Afghanistan, there was opium everywhere. Death was being grown, basically. I thought about my mum and my friends that died, and whatever else, from heroine. And it was sort of like my whole life flashed before me and I thought, "I've got to do something about this."
There's millions of people out there, farming communities, that live in circumstances that resonate with me. And I see the trauma within them from their circumstances. I always believed that there was a possible change from opium and what that could do for people's lives, people that were looked at as insignificant, as was I.
Put together a team, created a foundation called Plant for Peace, social impact initiative designed to help as many insignificant small-holding farmers living in conflict, whether that's internal or external, around the world. We've planted about just over two million trees, at the moment in Afghanistan. And done quite considerable things, you know, burning 3/4 billion dollars worth of drugs, developing a five-country expansion plan, and every single product that comes through that, we use the funds for social impact.
Personally, I don't measure success on the size of my bank balance, I measure success on the depth of my soul. And that's sort of who I am. To be able to look back and think, well, it was like chucking a stone in a pond, but the ripples kicked off something. That creates something phenomenal-amazing and affects all those peoples' lives. I wouldn't change anything in my life, because I had to go through what I had to go through to become who I've become and I hope the story that I've shared today, can help millions of people out there.
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James Brett became the Chairman of Plant for Peace - a social enterprise he set up to create food products with ingredients sourced from Afghanistan.
Following sexual abuse as a child and his mother's suicide, he has struggled with drug addiction, spent time in jail, experienced homelessness, been sectioned under the mental health act and overcome cancer three times.
He has devoted his life to making Plant for Peace a success, helping people in disadvantaged communities to lead more prosperous and peaceful lives.
