Mary Stevens - UK Instructor & Project Manager of FairFight (India)

Martial Arts give women permission to be powerful. -Mary Stevens

Listen in to my engaging interview with UK martial artist, Mary Stevens. Mary is a dynamic instructor and martial art woman, an author of children’s books, an instructor, mother, and project manager for FairFight, an Nonprofit Organization that uses martial arts as a vehicle to empower vulnerable women in Zimbabwe and India.

Click on the link below to listen to this interview:

Mary’s Biography:

I’m Mary Stevens. 48 years old, living near Oxford in the UK. Single parent but the kids are now both in university.

My main purpose is my martial arts school: teaching traditional karate and modern self-protection for ages 4- adult. Pre-lockdown I was teaching 18 classes a week; during lockdown it has been 20 per week due to adapting for Zoom.

My background is as a school teacher (history and English); I also teach fitness, I write children’s fiction for Oxford University Press (see video link below) and I project-manage for FairFight (see link below), an NGO that uses martial arts as a vehicle to empower vulnerable women in Zimbabwe and India.

As a child I was entranced by karate posters…but compelled to do ballet because that’s what my parents believed was appropriate for girls. I began to look for karate as a bully deterrent for my son after a bad experience in his early-years setting. I have always believed in the value of strong body language and confident boundaries for kids from an early stage and martial arts truly provides the solution to so many playground issues.

The link between martial arts and life skills has therefore become the thread that unites all the things that I like to do. In my own school, we constantly draw on the values of martial arts to underline the messages which can so easily be lost if experiences are not put into context.

There are mental health implications for young people as they reconnect with school and face-to-face contact. Also, I think, the complexities of managing ongoing non-contact martial arts training in the real as well as the online environment. I’m happy to talk about any related (or unrelated!) subject areas – whatever you feel will work well.

I have a lot in common with Sarah (Tucker), your last guest, especially with our focus on lessons children can take from books and class into life.

I have also been training and sharing ideas with Jamie Clubb and collaborating with him on self protection education. He’s been a great resource to help me with my professional development over the last year.