About Us

LAPIDO means ‘to speak up for’ or ‘advocate’ in the Acholi dialect of Northern Uganda. The charity was birthed out of a campaign to ‘Break the Silence’ and end the twenty-year war there.* The campaign, prompted by the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, taught vital lessons about the spiritual dimension in international affairs. Public affairs and media techniques, harnessed to the international church’s unique networks, achieved what no other agency had.  By increasing publicity and generating a huge amount of spiritual and social capacity over three years, the campaign handed politicians a bigger electoral mandate to address a difficult issue.

The charity seeks to amplify the voice of the forgotten and persecuted church around the world.  It aims also to improve what we’re calling ‘religious literacy’ in public affairs.  Secularization and distorted history have squeezed a sense of the transcendent from public life, and made religious discourse tabu.  This can and must be changed.  The world’s poor are also religious.  The rich can do little to change the world for the poor, or avert religiously sanctioned war, unless they learn the language of faith.

We are non-denominational, politically non-aligned and internationally experienced.  Our trustees have all worked in either Africa, India or the Pacific, on diplomatic or aid assignments.  Our Associates are senior journalists and professionals living and working on four continents.  We understand how the secular and the sacred interpret each other - and we seek to contribute that wisdom to the international discourse.

Who we are

Executive Director - Dr Jenny Taylor
An established media professional, academic and writer, she trained with Yorkshire Post Newspapers and became the first race reporter in the Westminster Press Group, disconcertingly finding herself interviewing her heartthrob Cat Stevens, just after he became Yusuf Islam. She has travelled widely seeing the work of civil society organizations all over Asia and Africa at first hand.  She is an expert on the connection between faith and culture, on which she has addressed parliamentary and Commonwealth gatherings.  Her doctorate is from SOAS in London on Islam and secularization.

Vishal Arora is our newest Associate - a journalist and writer, based in New Delhi, India.  He is currently the Features Editor of The Caravan, a journal of politics and culture published from the capital city. He also writes on religion and politics for the Indian and foreign media, including in the US, the UK and the UAE.  He is married to leading Indian human rights lawyer Termina Arora whose advocacy for persecuted minorities is contributing to a new politics in India.

Christoph Hasselbach is currently with Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcasting service. A life-long Anglophile, Christoph started his career at the BBC World Service - which he thinks of fondly as his 'alma mater'.

Nick Page was the well-modulated voice behind Radio 2's Nick Page Programme for many years, and has clocked up 35 years behind one mic or another. As a radio anchorman and producer he hosted Nightline for the London Broadcasting Company as well as programmes for schools on BBC Radio 4. As a communication consultant, he choreographs public events and conferences around the world, and is Secretary of the International Christian Media Commission. He is a member of the panel of judges for the Andrew Cross Awards.

Trustees

• Peter Penfold, CMG, OBE
• Mrs Ann Warren, MA
• The Revd John Ray, OBE
• Simon Sheldon, MSc
• Dr Colin Edwards, MBChB, BHB, BA (Hons) Theol.
• Dr Jenny Taylor, PhD

Advisory Board

• Revd Dr Arne Fjeldstad
• Zafar Ismail
• Dr John Azumah
• Dr Ida Glaser
• Jocelyn Hillman
• The Revd Andrew Rumsey
• Yemi Adedeji
• Roxy Foulkes
• The Revd Gareth Wardell
• Neil Addison
• Dr Ziya Meral
• Lis Howell
• Dr David Landrum

* The Acholi lands on the Uganda/Sudan border are poor in natural resources, but rich in spirituality and courage.   When President Museveni routed them from power in a coup in 1986, they took to the hills of southern Sudan to enact God’s revenge.   As the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, they brought mayhem and terror to the north for more than 20 years.   They did so according to a misreading of Ezekiel in the Old Testament.   This, mixed up with traditional snake religion and muti sacrifice held an entire nation in terrified thrall. The secular world understood little of this, least of all the destructive power of a sin/revenge/fear culture in a lawless state.   They ignored the situation, or dropped bombs on it (the US’ disastrous Operation Iron Fist).   It was a handful of Acholi church leaders who alone among 1,000 intellectuals, stayed to offer leadership, fight for justice and advocate relentlessly for a peaceful way through a terrible impasse that had become a by-word for child soldiering.   In partnership with British and European churches, they woke up the world.   Bob Geldof went and filmed there; the UN tripled its aid budget, and the International Criminal Court made it their test case.   Today, unique, traditional forms of reconciliation are being mediated by the church; the displacement camps are being broken up, and people are slowly returning to their villages.