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Anita Roddick was born in Littlehampton, in 1942, the daughter of Italian immigrants. She always helped out in her family's business and learned early lessons of war-time frugality from her mother. Lessons: Re-use, Re-fill and Re-cycle, that would become the cornerstore for her Environmental Activism. Anita says she was a natural outsider. (Her childhood idol was James Dean.) Spending time in a Kibbutz in Israel led to an around the world working trip where she was exposed to many other cultures and beauty rituals. These experiences planted the seeds of how she would do business after she started The Body Shop in a tiny shop in Brighton, England. Frustrated that she couldn't buy small sizes of every day cosmetics, she started her own small cosmetics company, using natural products, sold in inexpensive plastic bottles. The rest, as they say, is history. "I am aware that success is more than a good idea. It is timing too. The Body Shop arrived just as Europe was going green."

Anita & Thom Yorke of Radiohead for The Trade Justice Movement outside London's House of Parliament

Anita Roddick walks her talk. She is an activist, entrepreneur, wife, mother, author, a lady, a recipient of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and on and on. She has helped create and push forward so many things and won so many awards and backed so many worthy campaigns. Her vision keeps on growing and changing to fit what she sees happening around her and to help provide solutions to those injustices. "My sharpest focus has been matters of globalisation, because the "free trade at all costs" agenda is behind pretty much all of the issues I've spent the last 25 years campaigning on."After witnessing firsthand the chaos at the WTO meetings in Seattle in 1999, she realized her campaign for human rights, abused and ignored by trade rules, had only just begun. It is why she helped start The Trade Justice Movement, a fast growing group of organisations including aid agencies, environment and human rights campaigns, fair trade organisations, faith and consumer groups that are campaigning for trade justice - not free trade - with rules weighted to benefit poor people and the environment.

AnitaRoddick.com

BOOKS

A REVOLUTION IN KINDNESS (edited by Anita Roddick)

What would our world look like if we valued basic human kindness above all other ideals, such as wealth and power? How would our most familiar institutions -- our health-care system, our governments, our businesses, our schools, our prisons, our churches -- be transformed?

With the help of celebrities, politicians, homeless street vendors, political prisoners, activists, and entrepreneurs, this book redefines "kindness" to give it a new vitality that is far from "random." Featuring essays by Annie Lennox, Philip Berrigan, Ralph Nader, David Korten and many more.

Brave Hearts, Rebel Spirits: A Spiritual Activists Handbook (Published in 2003) Written by Brooke Shelby Biggs Conceived by Anita Roddick

You know the names Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi, but have you heard of Roy Bourgeois or Neta Golan? They, and the wealth of spiritual activists in this book are the heirs to a great tradition of faith-based activism. This book profiles environmentalists, war resisters, gay-rights activists, labor agitators, and child advocates. They are Buddhists and Catholics, Hindus and Muslims, Jews and Quakers. The stories of these modern-day prophets of positive change will inspire you and provide the resources you need to put your own beliefs to work in the world.

Take it Personally (USA Edition): How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World (Published in 2001) By Anita Roddick

Globalisation isn't just an amorphous idea: it affects everyone. In this stunningly designed new book, Anita invites the top thinkers in the struggle for humanitarian trade policies to weigh in on the problem, and to give citizens the tools and inspiration to do work for constructive solutions.

Contributors include David Korten, Julia Butterfly Hill, Vandana Shiva, Paul Hawken (author of Natural Capitalism), Naomi Klein (author of No Logo), and Ralph Nader.

CATCH THE TV SHOW TAKING IT PERSONALLY ON LINK TV