But to begin, I have to take you back to 1989.

I was married with four Children living in the seaside town of Folkston on the south coast of England.

I was also a police detective.

This earlier life was all about justice.

Now it is about tackling injustice, intolerance and in equality.

I hate injustice.

I hate it when people are denied the same opportunities as the rest of us enjoy, simply because I could be bullied into compliance.

Towards the end, in 1989 I witnessed the extraordinary revolutions that we're taking the place sweeping across Europe, ending with Romania on the hasty trial and execution of the Ceausescu's.

Although I was aware that there was in a big historical event happening, Romania could have bean a 1,000,000 miles away.

Soon, the media pictures turn from revolution to the thousands of Romanian Children living in squalid state institutions.

Shocked, I wanted to help.

So I drove from the UK across Europe to Romania with a pediatric nurse with borrowed a van, and we'd filled it for the things that we thought would be needed.

Such a CZ baby food, disposable diapers, clothes, toys, those sort of things.

When we arrived in Bucharest, we met with some British nurses who invited us to work with him in an institution in Plata.

Rushed in the county of Cal Arash.

They were working with Children known as the Rick You Peoples, those for whom nothing else could be done.

Nothing prepared me in my life.

For that moment, the building was surrounded by a large wall.

When I entered inside, the smell of excrement and vomit overwhelmed me.

I heard Children screaming hysterically.

Other Children were muttering excitedly in a language that was incomprehensible to the rest of us.

The miserable room that I worked in contained 20 Children aged eight years.

They were all half the size of my daughter, who's the same age.

The Children lay motionless in rusty white cots with vertical metal bars, giving the impression of little prison cells side by side.

Common lived in her cot at the back of the room.

Her wrinkled and frail body looked like she was an 80 year old woman trapped in a topless body.

Common died the week after Florentina occupy the cot on the other side of the room.

A beautiful Roma girl with a mop of black curly hair with the enormous size but almost blind cloud ear lived opposite Florrie, another beautiful child who simply just laying a cot, staring at something the rest of us could not see.

All the Children had swollen stomachs, and I couldn't help, like new to the images of starving Children in Africa.

Like those Children, flies congregate around the eyes on the mouth mouths of the Children, who seemed either to enjoy the sensations that they were giving them the attention that they were being given or simply too lethargic to brush them away.

Meals were delivered in metal buckets.

20 babies move bottles with a bit of milk, some milk and crush maze covered with a cloth.

It was more economical to feed these Children with bottles, and it was to give them solid food.

We had to do something that this was crazy.

We had to do something positive.

So against the director's wishes, we wean the Children onto solid food.

The vomiting and the diarrhea ended.

We took the Children after these cots they were protesting.

It was the only world they had ever known, and we put them on the floor and they began to interact for the other Children around.

Some learned to walk, which opened up a vast world for them to explore.

Some of the Children, all of the Children, just stared blankly at the toys that were brought, so we told them how to play.

He took the Children outside for the first time ever, and I felt the sun won't their palate bodies.

We hung a colorful sign above each caught with the child's name, recalled the Children by their names, and the Children began to learn that they had an identity.

Sanity at last was becoming was returning to one of the rooms, at least during 1990 on 1991 are visited Romania many times on Worked with the Children in Plata rushed in April 1991 I organized a convoy of 100 vehicles that left the UK drove across Europe to Romania.

The convoy was broken up into groups and each of these groups delivered aid to 15 institutions throughout the country and, more importantly, carried on supporting these institutions long after they went back home.

Life could not only be unjust.

It can also be unfair.

Just before Christmas 1991 my oldest son, John, was killed in a traffic accident.

A few days after his 19th birthday, my life was in turmoil and I found it increasingly difficult to comprehend the world around me.

I decided I would try and run away from all the hurt.

Come to Bucharest with a British charity out set up to help the Children platter arrest.

I hate intolerance.

I hate it when people are denied the same opportunities that other people enjoy, simply because they could be bullied and forgotten because they're different.

When I arrived in Bucharest with three other volunteers British volunteers, we moved into a small apartment block which had been provided to his bottle.

Ministry of the Interior Toe hold the project, the House of Project.

The building was identical to seven others in the same area, and this area was known as Zab Roots in Bucharest.

With the worsening economic situation and poverty on the rise in Romania, these blocks soon attracted hundreds of desperately poor Roma families looking for a place to live.

Although the area was a no go area for the police and everybody else.

I felt quite comfortable living there.

I mixed easy with the locals in the cafes and the bars, as soon learned that I was being referred to as in glacial neighborhood, the Crazy.

So what?

We were going to do the plan Waas, that we were going to convert this building into large apartments where we could provide lifelong foster care to some of the Children 40 Children from chattering.

The project proved to be a nightmare.

The Romanian government broke its promises despite refusing the pay bribes.

Officials continue to demand inducements for essential documents.

Although we had, resource is and we were attracting skills volunteers from all over the world to work on the building.

Work was slow because the authorities still hadn't re housed many of the families that we're living in a block.

When we took it over, we found it more difficult to raise money and material donations on.

We found that less and less volunteers for volunteering to come over.

So in the autumn of 19 94 the protect eventually collapsed.

The British side of it collapsed for me.

My life was also buckling around me as well, slowly at first and then been increasing speed until I found myself without a home.

My life savings gone on the painful divorce night and day often fused together as I lay in bed, wallowing in self pity on refusing to acknowledge your future.

I had to face my demons, each one in terms.

All right, inequality.

I hate it when those who have a great deal do not help those who threw a lack of opportunity or choice.

I have have a place.

It was heartbreaking to give up on providing long term foster care to the Children from platter oration.

Good.

If any good came from it, it was that we were able to reuse the block on make It into a resource center.

So we renamed the Bach frumpy one, too.

Joanne House originally, and what we did was make new Romanian partners bring them together and help them, too.

Create protects in this building.

So in a short five years, the building the Resource Center have boasted a residential school for Children with profound disabilities.

Ah, halfway house for young people leaving institutional care and equipping them with life skills to central life skills.

A computer training center for adults with physical disabilities so that they could enter into the job market.

Associate I'm Medical Center on kindergarten for the local Roma families living in the area in the winter.

In 1997 the mayor for Bucharest asked me to open the first night shelter in the country since between the two second the two world wars.

I thought it strange because I have no experience with homelessness at all.

So in those days in for the Google, Google was in its infancy or the Internet was in its infancy, so I could hardly google.

What's a night shelter?

But they didn't know who I could ask for advice.

So, junior next couple of weeks colleague and I visited homeless men in Iran, the Gare du Nord, and eventually I asked Cem what a homeless shelter boss, What do they think of a homeless shelter on?

I was amazed to hear them asked me to tell them what it was because I was the expert.

Well, okay, I even had a room to live in when I was in the in the ghetto.

But I mean, the's guys got nothing, and I helped him understand that realized that's through their experience.

A unique insights into living on the streets without shelter.

They were actually the experts through lived experience.

So together they agree what a night shelter Zeer night shelter would be.

And we helped set it up.

They helped with the renovation work, but you put it with 20 beds and lockers for personal belongings.

Um, we created Ah, kitchen Fordham.

Um on we employed to homeless people to be the supervisors.

I'll always remember that first night we opened.

The dignitaries were horrified that I was in trusting the homeless shelter and its residents to to homeless people.

They called me crazy.

That word again, I warned me that everything would be stolen in the morning.

Well, I found 20 very happy people and for one, had been the first time he had slept in the bed in five and 1/2 years.

Another told me he was so comfy he didn't want to lose it or waste it by sleeping.

There were many dignitaries have visited the shelter, including Prince Charles King, me High Queen Anna and revoking vice president of World Bank.

So we had lots and lots of visitors slowly maturity.

The demography of homeless has changed on more and more homeless families were ending up on the street.

And that's when Castro Anna decided then to work with those particularly vulnerable people today were very successful organization with a committed staff team on volunteers.

After a major refurbishment, we have to shelters Now.

Two centers provide safe, temporary accommodation, a lot of comprehensive support.

The women and Children experiencing domestic abuse have family homelessness.

As from me.

I've been on a journey that has taken me from the life of a police officer, helping to establish justice to life for our witness, much inequality, intolerance and injustice.

I found that the key to unlocking thes three wrongs is opportunity when we have the courage to show others another way.

Those that have Bean bullied into compliance to me gives him opportunity.

When we look what the past, what makes us different and invite people to participate, then we create opportunity, and when we give people that it's simple, resource is to move on with their lives, then we empower them to make opportunities for themselves.

It's important and I want to say a big thank you a big thank you to those who continue to give Ah, big Thank you to those who care.

Your support is so very, very much needed.

So thank you.