The Helping Hand of a Baroness

Written by Melinda Ennis-Roughton Thursday, September 09 2010

Lady Caroline Cox

Lady Caroline Cox, the Baroness of Queensbury in Greater London, says she’s the first baroness she’s ever met.

As she likes to reply when asked about her title, she’s a “nurse by intent and a baroness by astonishment.” But when surveying the philanthropic work she’s done around the globe for the last 30 years, one realizes that the trained nurse and Life Peer of the British House of Lords could be titled the queen of compassion.

Baroness Cox is in Atlanta raising funds for the organization she founded in 2002, the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART). On Sept. 11, at Daza Ballroom Academy in Atlanta, HART is staging a benefit called “Dancing with the HART Stars.” The event will include community volunteers such as philanthropist Sally Dorsey and is hosted by Daza Dance Studios of Atlanta. Audience members will sponsor professionals and amateurs as they dance to raise money and awareness for HART (tickets available at http://www.hart-us.org/ticketform.htm).

Dancing with the HART Stars Tickets: http://www.hart-us.org/ticketform.htm

Lady Caroline will dance with a star herself – Antonio Daza of Daza Dance Atlanta – as part of her indefatigable efforts to raise money for the organization she describes as “working to help people in need who are off the radar screen.” The event has been organized with the aid of HART’s U.S. chapter headquartered in Fortson, Ga., near Columbus.

To paraphrase actor George Clooney’s recent acceptance speech for the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award: When a disaster happens, there is usually plenty of help from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as CARE or the Red Cross. The hard part comes later when the media attention is gone and most of us move on to a new story.

That’s where Lady Caroline and HART step in – often with help in areas where there is no media attention at all or in closed border nations where, as HART’s mission states, they work with people who are “unreached, unhelped, and unserved.” The organization also promotes advocacy as well as aid for places that many of us don’t even know exist.

Using her influential position in the House of Lords, Cox has brought attention to little known causes such as the self-determination for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. A majority Armenian province, the landlocked region is within Azerbaijan, a former state of the Soviet Union which borders Russia, Georgia, Iran, and Armenia. War broke out over the region’s independence from Azerbaijan. It lasted from 1988 until 1994, with as many as 230,000 Armenians killed in the conflict.

From Burma with hope

“Ethnic cleansing” against Armenians continues, Cox says, although the two governments are now at a stalemate. The co-chairman of the U.S. Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues has described Cox as a "true Armenian nationalist who would give her life for Armenia and Karabakh.”

Born in 1937 to a surgeon from Hertfordshire, U.K., Cox did not begin life in nobility. However, her passion for noble causes began when she trained as a nurse in the late 1950s. While married to a doctor and raising three children, Cox earned a first-class degree in sociology and a master’s in economics.

The career that followed would seem incredible even for an adventure novel. Her résumé includes working as principal sociology lecturer for the Polytechnic Institute of North London, director of Nursing Education Research at Chelsea College, and founding chancellor of Bournemouth College. She also has advocated and written books on education reform, along with receiving honors too numerous to name here, including Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1992, her “peerage,” making her Baroness of Queensbury, was announced by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The honor provides Cox a seat in Parliament’s House of Lords for life.

But Caroline Cox was never one to simply take a seat. From the time of her appointment she has used her position to travel to trouble spots to see situations for herself, returning home to advocate within her government and orchestrate aid.

We are the children - Nigeria

“I wanted to travel on the trucks,” she says of her first international aid experience when she was asked to be a patron for medical aid in Poland during its struggle from Soviet independence in that late 1980s.

Cox founded HART to “support the forgotten people of Europe, Africa, and Asia.” In addition to Nagorno-Karabakh, HART has programs in East and West Burma, East Timor, India, Nigeria, southern Sudan, and northern Uganda. Running the entire organization with a staff of – as she says – three and a half, and with a comparatively scant budget of 500,000 pounds (less than $1 million), Cox attributes the achievements of her efforts to “doing good by stealth.”

With virtually no overhead, Cox provides aid that is predicated on allowing local people the “the dignity of choice.” She begins any mission by asking people what they most need and then using local manpower to get the job done. Calling it “the multiplier effect,” Cox employs the technique of training locals to run the centers and programs that HART establishes.

Kids in India

Whether it’s building the Orphan Rehabilitation center in Patongo, Uganda, or establishing the Lady Cox Rehabilitation Center in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh, the organization depends on local partners to achieve its goals.

For example, in Burma, now officially called the union of Myanmar, the nation is under a junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). In eastern Burma, HART works with people in the Shan state as the sole funder of SWAN’s (Shan Women’s Action Network) Women’s Empowerment Program, assisting with primary health care clinics and refugee camps for victims of the SPDC regime.

One of Lady Cox’s more controversial advocacy issues is her stand against the practice of Sharia law in England. Sharia, literally Muslim law, has different interpretations, but in orthodox form is contentious for its treatment of women. “Sharia law is now practiced in the U.K.,” says Cox, who has recently become controversial in England for her opposition to the fundamentalist Muslim practice. Cox believes her nation has gone too far to embrace religious tolerance.

The Baroness

Cox, who is a Christian, says HART supports communities and people without regard to religious affiliation. “We don’t proselytize, and our aid is unconditional,” says Cox. “The Shan people of Burma are Buddhists and lovely,” she says. Where she draws the line is when religious beliefs trample basic human rights or override the law of the land, in this case, British law.

One thing that’s not controversial is the energy and passion that Lady Cox exudes for HART’s multitude of missions. Traveling around the globe into some of its saddest and most neglected regions with the exuberance of a 20 year old, the 70-something Lady Cox likes to live by a quote she attributes to St. Francis of Assisi:

“Pity weeps and turns away, compassion weeps and puts out a hand to help.”

A veteran of the marketing/advertising business, Melinda Ennis-Roughton is a writer specializing in women’s issues and film criticism, and she is the principal and owner of an Atlanta-based marketing firm called MelWorks Inc. She was a contributing film critic from 2004 to 2007 for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, where she wrote more than 100 film reviews and is still listed as a major critic on the website Rottentomatoes.com

While living in England from 1998 until 2001, she worked with Random House Books and was a contributing writer to Women Abroad magazine, Atlanta Magazine, and Cox Newspapers.

Her career highlights include the position of executive director/chief marketing officer (CMO) for Brand Atlanta, which was responsible for marketing the city under Shirley Franklin’s administration. She served as global CMO for Church's Chicken, supervising marketing direction from China to Costa Rica. Her past also includes marketing/consulting and business writing work with Sylvan Learning Centers, Emory Healthcare, and a 10-year term with Arby’s Restaurants. At Arby’s, she rose to the position of senior vice president, marketing, and was the first female vice president of the organization.

She has two sons, has been married for 27 years, and her passions are her family, film, and politics.