Photo Credit: Cozy Cabin Photography

Cathy and David Gilbert and the two youngest of their sixteen children – Moses and Liean – are strengthening the Inclusive Leadership movement through their active involvement in the Inclusive Leadership Co-operative and Cowichan Intercultural Society’s Multicultural Leadership Group (MLG). Moses, Liean and their fellow MLGers describe themselves as: “Leaders from younger and older generations and many different cultures. We include everyone, help others and make sure no one gets left behind or left out.”

The Gilberts are very concerned about what happens to children who get left behind when adoptive parents change their minds. This issue is explored in the Fifth Estate documentary: A Boy Named Moses (aired November, 2014). Cathy says, “Over the twenty-five plus years that I’ve been connected to adoption I’ve come across over twenty kids (without even stopping to think too hard) who were re-homed, disrupted, abandoned – one way or another – passed from one adoptive parent to another or passed back into the system. This show was for all of them. If the show helps prevent this happening to even one child….”

Moses says, “It’s sad when people do things that are not right to other people, especially when they can’t do anything about it. It’s kind of scary a lot of the time. I was scared I wouldn’t have a family”

Click here to watch this 40 minute Fifth Estate episode. Read on for an essay by Linda Hill and Cathy Gilbert about how going public with Moses’s story is a courageous example of the Anti-Discrimination First Aid skill of Ethical Witnessing.

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