"I have always believed in solidarity in the world. And if you have ideals you have to be consequent and work on their realization.” – why dreams in life most often have nothing to do with earning lots of money.

Brigitte Brodmann, Prison Psychologist, La Paz, Bolivia

When people talk about living their dream a lot of things come to mind: beaches, yacht, sports car or becoming a star. Brigitte, a forty-five year old Swiss, however lives her dream without fitting in any of these clichés. She has always wanted to live in the South. What she fell in love with was not Toscana but La Paz in Bolivia, a marvellous town, known as the highest capital of the world. She has also always wanted to work for a better, more just and equitable world. In La Paz she has the chance to help “outlaws without hope and future”, people spending years in Bolivian jails, waiting to get free or for their trial. If you think she earns decent money in this difficult and sometimes even dangerous job – well, she does not. Brigitte has been working in La Paz for three years fully as a volunteer. Once in a while she goes to Switzerland to earn some money and then she comes back. When Brigitte showed us around La Paz, walking through the streets she loves, she told us that all this is no sacrifice at all for her. She is not running away from anything and she is not a martyr, she has just found something that makes her happy and she appreciates what comes back form the people she works with. Being connected in such a positive way to so many people gives her deep satisfaction – that’s way she will continue living her dream.

Enjoy Brigitte’s selected thoughts and statements from our discussion in the following lines. You may be able to read more about her work in our book “MyImpact”.

Brigitte Brodmann’s selected quotations:
"I have always believed in solidarity in the world. And if you have ideals you have to be consequent and work on their realization."

"I have always worked on two tracks: one, ca. 50% of my time, would be bread jobs - some coordination or secretary work- the other 50% would be engagements for political and social causes."

"I really do not want to live in an unequal world."

"One of the most specific moments when I felt that something was wrong about the world was when I saw the famous photo of the Vietnamese girl being burned by napalm."

"I have been engaged politically since I was 15 or 16 years old. My first activities were around preventing a nuclear plant in Switzerland from being built - we were successful. Other initiatives, demonstrations etc. followed. Soon I realized that legal questions kept coming up and that's why I decided to study law."

"As a young activist I used to sell quite bad coffee, but for the right cause. It was about fair trade - a term unknown in the 70ies but familiar to most people today."

"I don't feel that it is a sacrifice to leave Switzerland. A new part of my life has come and it's good to have a component of surprise in life. I would not want to know exactly what will happen when to me."

"Currently I work with three prisons, doing individual and group work. Most of it is about encouraging people to take responsibility for their life and their actions."

"I do not believe that prisons are the right way to go and that they are necessary."

"Social riots in a country also mean conflicts and aggression in families and communities; they are very closely interconnected and need to be looked at in this context. When inequality gets too big, civic war is not far."

"I get a lot of satisfaction from relationships with other people, in Bolivia we laugh and dance a lot. This is different than at home and it suits me very well."

"I always believed that I would live somewhere in the South and I always wished to be in a country where big changes happen. Bolivia is the perfect place for me to be now!"

"When I walked through the streets right after the election of Evo Morales I could not take my eyes off the faces that seemed to say "finally this country is also my country". The joy and hope here are great."

"People are willing to come up with a lot of energy if they believe that their children have the chance to have better lives in the future."

Some background on Brigitte Brodmann:
Brigitte was born and grew up in Switzerland. Starting at the age of 16, she was politically active in a broad range of activities. One of her favourite projects was helping to establish the “Dritte Welt Läden”, some of the first shops carrying fair trade goods from all over the world.

After a decade of political activism, Brigitte decided to study Law in Geneva at the age of 30. She experienced that in almost all her activist projects legal issues have been very important from the start. Due to health problems making full-time career impossible, Brigitte spend her 30ies working part time for various organizations, among them the International Committee of the Red Cross, to earn the money to finance her political career.
When one of her best friends went back to Bolivia in 2000 Brigitte decided in 2002 to spend one year in this country and see how she can contribute to her ideals there. Once she fell in love with this country and found an extremely satisfying job, she did not want to leave anymore. Today, Brigitte works at three prisons around La Paz.

If you would like to engage with the work of Brigitte Brodmann please contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly.