Personal Motivation Casper
Casper te Riele
Founder and CEO
Coming from a wealthy and privileged environment, the first time I witnessed inequality was when I was 17, while visiting the Townships of Cape-town in South-Africa. This experience sparked something in me that pushed me to visit similar places in the years to come. It wasn’t so much the extreme poverty and inhumane circumstances that affected me. Rather, it was the warmth, hospitality and strength of the people living in those circumstances that moved me. I just couldn’t believe how people so nice could live in circumstances so harsh.
In the years after I visited and worked in places such as the refugee camps in Lesbos, poverty-stricken villages in Laos and slums in Colombia. Every time one thing confused me. The image that I had before visiting these places was completely different than what I saw when I got there. That image led me to expect violent people, dangerous situations and a hostile reception. What I experienced was exactly the opposite. It seemed like the worse the circumstances I got to, the more friendly, warm and welcoming the people were. That’s when I realised that the image I had of those places before I went there, didn’t really include the humans that live in them. I was told about the crimes, the drugs and the atrocities. Those stories created fear. And that fear, in a way, legitimises those atrocities. We are all fine with terrorists being locked up in camps. But when we start looking, we see that most of the refugees in those camps are not terrorists. They are humans. Just like you and me. When we are able to see that, fear ends and understanding begins. Compassion begins. Empathy begins. The moment we meet somebody, the moment we start listening, is the moment we start understanding. While we cannot imagine what it is like to live in the same circumstances as people that live in poverty thousands of kilometres away, when we start listening to them, we understand that we are all the same.
I am a privileged white man from the Netherlands. But I’m no different than those people. In fact, I wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for everyone else in this world. We are all connected through the food we eat, clothes we wear and air we breathe, and that is why the suffering of one is the suffering of all and the suffering of all is the suffering of one. Therefore, with Upeksha I want to fight the suffering in the world, not only by helping those who suffer, but also to ignite compassion in those who don’t suffer, so they will join us in our fight for a world without suffering.