Philip Wollen, the Australian Banker who Gave it All Away, Winsome Constance Kindness Trust

[Annces]

Radical kindness: the banker who gave it all away
Katherine Kizilos
April 9, 2009






Philip and Trix Wollen own Kindness House in Fitzroy, where two thirds of the tenants don't pay rent.

ON THE face of it, kindness doesn't sound like a radical idea, just as Philip Wollen, at first glance, does not look like a radical. Wollen is a former merchant banker. He was a vice-president of Citibank when he was 34, and a general manager at Citicorp. Australian Business Magazine named him one of the top 40 headhunted executives in Australia. But about 1990 — he is not exactly sure of the year — Wollen decided to give away 90 per cent of his capital, a process he describes as "reverse tithing".

Since then Wollen has donated millions to improving the environment and helping the powerless — children, animals and the terminally ill — around the world. He sponsors the anti-whaling vessel the Sea Shepherd and the South Australian Children's Ballet Company, and has built schools, orphanages, lion parks and sanctuaries. His Winsome Constance Kindness Trust supports more than 400 projects in 40 countries. Wollen says his aim is to die broke, to give away all he owns with "warm hands", and that he is on track to do so.

Outside the Brunswick Street entrance is an open bird cage with a two-sided sign. One side bears William Blake's lines: "A robin red breast in a cage/ puts all of heaven in a rage". On the other is Wollen's own philosophy: "In their capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig is a bear … is a boy."

He agrees with philosopher Peter Singer that animal rights pose "the greatest moral issue facing humanity since the abolition of slavery". As part of this philosophy, Wollen also opposes dairying, believing it to be cruel to animals and citing health and environmental concerns.



Asked to explain the origins of his commitment to animal causes, he quotes King Lear, who asked the blind Earl of Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" Gloucester replied: "I see it feelingly."

Says Wollen in a measured way: "I heard the screams of my father as cancer ravaged his body, and then I realised I had heard those screams before — in slaughterhouses, in the dog meat markets, in cattle ships, and the dying mother whale as a harpoon explodes in her brain as she calls out to her calf. Their cries are the cries of my father. And I realised that when we suffer, we suffer as equals. Screams are identical from any species and in any language."


FULL ARTICLE
http://www.watoday.com.au/national/radical-kindness-the-banker-who-gave-it-all-away-20090409-a25j.html?page=-1

[Kaleko]

1. Unbelievable -

what people all over the world do to animals and to each other. This article will haunt me, I'm sure.

Philip Wollen is a living bodhisattva for doing all this work facing the cruelty head-on.