In the middle of unthinkable hardship and atrocity,Angelina Joliehas witnessed incredible grace and generosity. In fact, it was while visiting the Syrian border that a young girl shared one of the few items she still had.
“This little girl came up to me and offered me some biscuits that she had in her pocket,” Jolie says in the new issue ofPeople, now on newsstands. “Knowing what she’d come from, knowing what she was heading into, knowing everything she’d experienced, yet in that moment she wasn’t thinking of herself or everything she had lost. She wasn’t sitting with self pity. She just saw me—I must have looked tired and she just walked over and thought to just be kind. That’s what makes human beings so wonderful.”
In her two-plus decades of advocacy and humanitarian work, Jolie, 46, has gotten an intimate look at the effects of war and extreme poverty. With the number of displaced people around the world at a staggering 82 million—a number that is expected to double in the next several years—Jolie has vowed to not only continue her work as Special Envoy to the UN Refugee Agency, but is also committed to finding solutions.
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Shutterstock; Brian Bowen Smith/Courtesy Marvel Studios
“My spirit has benefited, my life has benefited, from being allowed to be in the company of people who are surviving very difficult things,” she says. “It’s been a gift to me. I don’t like the idea that it’s some burden, that it’s so nice of somebody to go out of their way to help somebody else. It’s not. I don’t ever see this idea of charity.”
TheEternalsstar says one of the most valuable lessons she ever learned was from an Afghan grandmother. “She was raising her grandchildren because her children had been murdered and she was in a refugee camp,” she says. “I remember I started to cry and she said, ‘I don’t need you to cry, I need you to help me.’ That was a big lesson. The thought that sitting and feeling sorry for somebody is this luxury because you can be in your feelings and they don’t have that time to feel sorry for themselves.”
When she first started traveling withUNHCR, she says, “I realized there are people around the world who want their lives to be dedicated to helping others, finding solutions for others, being a part of the world with each other. It changed my perspective. I just wanted to be a part of the real world. And I wanted to have a life of some meaning.”
RELATED VIDEO:Angelina Jolieon How Her Six Kids Are Growing Up: “They’re Pretty Great People”
Jon Kopaloff/WireImage; Zest Books
More recently, Jolie and her daughter Shiloh worked with a top conservation organization in Namibia, theNaankuse Foundation, to create Shiloh’s Wildlife Sanctuary. The sanctuary is primarily a safe place for elephants and rhinos that have been injured or orphaned due to poachers. “They have recently had to move different animals because of the desert expanding, the lakes drying up,” she explains.
ForKnow Your Rights, which is on sale everywhere, Jolie collaborated with Amnesty International. “Children are on the front lines of the struggle for human rights today,” she says. “We want to ensure every child knows and understands their rights, and how to claim them. It’s intended to be a practical guide. It was written for young people and the stories of youth rights activists we consulted are the bedrock of the book. We wanted the book to be open and honest and not to pull punches. That’s why I wrote at the start some adults won’t want young people to read it.”
She adds, “I hope that this is a book that might inspire a conversation between parents and children. And that it might remind governments that child rights are as real as those of adults.”
Angelina Jolie in Capitol Hill.Andrew Harnik/AP/Shutterstock
Ironically, despite being on the cover of PEOPLE’s Kindness issue, Jolie says, “I don’t think of myself as a kind person. Generosity of spirit, I think that’s a better way of putting it. When you go to sleep at night and you feel like you’ve been of use to another human being, whether it’s your friend, your child or someone, that’s a life worth living.”
source: people.com
