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For someone who deals with so much human sadness, Camila Batmanghelidjh is relentlessly, admirably positive.

Not unrealistic, just hopeful. It's quite a feat for someone who oversees the care of 36,000 vulnerable and neglected children in London, Bristol and Liverpool. She has fed, sheltered and counselled young people for over 30 years, founding two charities Place 2Be (of which the Duchess of Cambridge is a patron) and Kids Company. Spiritual, but tirelessly practical, Batmanghelidjh says it's the children that keep her cheerful. Inspiring doesn't even cut it - she is proof of what could we all achieve if we keep self-interest at bay.

Allow her to tell you her story and how she made it:

I wanted to set up an orphanage from the age of nine

There were probably a couple of influences. My grandfather was a graceful, beautiful man who worked as a paediatrician and I felt that he had something spiritual about him. I was convinced that that spirituality was because he had taken up a vocation and I wanted some of that. Then my other grandfather was self-made multimillionaire who'd his first million by the age of 22. He had this real get up and go to him. I have both elements in my life and am a fusion of the two.

My empathy comes from nearly dying as a baby

I was born two and a half months premature, They didn't put me in an incubator because they thought I would die, so they just sent me home. Because of that I suffered slight brain damage, for example my visual processing. I still can't type or drive and I couldn't read until I was 12. In some ways, I was very disabled but I had this sense of otherness and spirituality. I am very practical and pragmatic, but I believe in a different kind of order. There are patterns in the world and in people's behaviour. When I was nine, I asked my mum why we didn't have any books in the library on other people's emotions. I was a different kind of kid, but my family never tried to change me. My mum gave me a calm confidence and helped me stay true to who I was. I had a notion that people were different and this was my difference.

My childhood was a rollercoaster and I was never considered bright at school

My family were born in the middle of a cultural movement in Iran and we were wealthy. My brother and I would hide at the top of the stairs as ambassadors and royals arrived for grand receptions. My father founded one of the biggest sports centres at the time in the Middle East and it was a kids paradise. We were picked up by police officers and we'd hang out at the centre all day then we were driven home. I didn't realise we were rich. I thought all kids were in danger of being kidnapped and that's why we had security guards. Then in the Seventies, I was sent to Sherbone Girls in the UK (a fee-paying boarding school in Dorset), where the teachers quickly decided I was a common entrance mistake. There was a duality to me; I loved reading theoretical books, but I couldn't write. So I was put in the lowest sets and was perceived as thick. I knew I wasn't stupid and that there was something medically wrong with me, but it was frustrating.

My dad was captured at presumed dead

Then the Iranian revolution happened and my dad was found on a list of wealthy Iranians an captured by Khomeini's people. I was told at school, he had been executed, but I never knew for sure. Different people would tell me different things.

Having no money led to my first carework role

While my dad was imprisoned or dead, we didn't know at that stage, the school fees were being paid but we had no other money so I used to work at nurseries in the holidays. I soon realised I was good with disturbed toddlers. There were children who used to bite their fingers, then draw on the wall with blood, others would cut up Persian carpets or jump through Francis Bacon paintings. I'd help resolve conflicts, but I never worried about the behaviour itself - I looked at why they were doing these things. They're trying to regulate themselves; their behaviour is a child's way of righting problems within them. I would spend time with the kids and find out what was causing their behaviour and then resolve it.

Next came academic therapy studies

I used the money working in nurseries and with wealthy families for university. I had always wanted to use the arts into my therapeutic work so I studied theatre arts and theory at Warwick university, which gave me a good grounding in how to use puppets and performance art. I'd organise events for children in my spare time, but I'd always have to use a different name because if Khomeini had found out where I was, because I was my father's daughter, I'd be executed. So I used different colours as my surname instead. After that, I started my masters in psychotherapy at Regent's University in London as their youngest ever masters intake, aged 21. I'd read so much, had obtained a first class degree from Warwick and had done a lot of experience in the field so they let me in.

It was while I was at university I was reunited with my dad

We were reunited at Warwick university canteen, which was mundane and profound at the same time. The police had informed me that he'd escaped across the border from Iran to Turkey. He'd skinned a sheep, used it as a coat, and swam across the sea. When we met, I had to tell me that my sister had committed suicide a few years before because of his disappearance. That wasn't easy.

The idea for my first charity Place 2Be came from one massive flaw in children's therapy

I was 24 when I founded Place 2Be because after I left university I realised that the central problem in children's therapy is the assumption that there is a parent who is able to bring them to therapy. Most of these children are being maltreated and for those parents, taking their kids to therapy is the last thing they'll do. So I started going to the schools and I came across a suicidal seven-year-old girl, who wouldn't talk. The school thought she was stupid, so I took her into the library and she still refused to talk. But, in time, she began drawing strange pictures of a child's head on a gorilla's body and vice versa. I began saying what I thought she was thinking, things like, 'This is scaring me' or 'I don't feel comfortable with this' and eventually she told me that she'd been sexually abused by men in the opposite tower block to where she lived since she was five. She'd had no one to talk to before about it. I reported what was happened and the men were taken to court, but they were freed because the child couldn't give a succinct sequence of events. Eventually, they were imprisoned later after abusing an older child, who could talk more cohesively.

The Place 2Be was originally a school broom cupboard

After what happened with that girl, I thought what these children need is a safe place where they can talk. There was a broom cupboard with a window in the school I was working in and I used that as where I did therapy and because I knew that we could never call it anything to do with therapy as it would scare off the kids, I called it the Place 2Be. The children were told at assemblies and they came in their hundreds - that's when I realised the scale of maltreated children and knew I had to set up a bigger foundation.

I stopped paying my mortgage repayments to establish Place 2Be

We struggled with funding and we were unknown, so I used my mortgage repayments to pay for supervisors in the therapy sessions. Abbey National took me to court, which I only found out on the day. So I arrived at court on my own, with no solicitor and told the judge what had happened; that I was trying to fund a counselling service for children. He asked everyone to leave and said to me, 'Are you for real? You could lose your home.' I said, 'I understand that, but these children need this.' He caled everyone back in the room and told Abbey National, 'Camila will pay you back when she's ready.' After that Abbey National became friends with me and they still help me to this day.

Kids Company was born because I realised therapy alone wasn't enough

What I these children needed was a network - social workers, holistic work and therapy. I was worried about what happened to the children during the school holidays, so I set up a centre under the railway arches at Camberwell.

I've been threatened with knives by angry youth gangs

The centre was quickly attacked by gang boys who threatened us with knives and set things on fire - none of the therapies I'd been taught had told me how to deal with that. When you see a 18-year-old with a knife lose it, it's a different thing to a screaming child. I felt very out of my depth, but I kept calm and talked to them. They were used to people shouting at them, and they've said since that they found my language very curious indeed. Eventually, they stopped.

My biggest challenge is still funding, not the children

Hundreds of children from babies to men and women up to the age of 30 turn up and there's no one to fund them. People think that because Kids Company is high-profile that we don't need money, but even now I start each year not knowing where the money is going to come from month by month and it's frightening. Our funding came from 17,000 different sources last year - there are no certainties. Give me a disturbed child any day; that's far easier than finding the money to pay for their care.

I have an non-conventional approach to hiring my staff

I look for a capacity to love. I'm interested in their relationships with their parents, their loved ones, their friends. I also look for a quirky talent or gift - one of my best hires used to be the number one rollerblader in Italy. I look at individual presence and their humanity. I'm not interested in skills - you can teach those. In key workers, I'm interested in people with an ability to love.

My day starts with children calling me on my mobile

Sometimes, they'll have awful nightmares or they might just want to check in and say hello. After that I go for a swim, then I do therapeutic work all day; I always take on the children that come across as the most challenging. When I'm busy at fundraising events or meetings, there is my clinical PA who is there to take to any of my children so they know that there is always someone there to talk to. I speak to some of my kids two or three times a day. From 6pm until 11 or 12pm, I'll answer emails, conduct more conferences, meet with local authorities, teaching unions and try to think of new ways or raising money. I always travel in cars to make sure I am always contactable for the children.

The children are my inspiration and drive

Whenever I have difficulties, I think of the fortitude and forgiveness they exercise. How do you try and explain why someone's mother burns them with an iron or cigarettes and how do you forgive that? But these children do. They are my reason. Them and my staff, who I am passionately devoted to.

There are so many people I admire

Prince Charles is one of them and Sandi Toksvig is another - she burst into tears when she visited the centre because of the plight of some of these children. I admire the scientists, who are looking into the impact abuse has on children's brains. I admire companies like Innocent smoothies, who give us grants and assistance so children can have food.

Being hungry is the number one reason children come to us

When I first started telling people this, they didn't believe me but we see this at street level and it's true.

If you want to make positive change, don't expect it to happen easily or quickly

Change-makers have to be prepared to be disliked and to have a hard time. If you have a family or your personal life is challenging, make a small change - don't try and take on the big ones, which involve a lot of sacrifice. If you have children and try to dedicate your life to other disturbed children, you'll make your kids jealous and you won't be able to give the children you're working with the attention they need and deserve. Don't go into this thinking you'll be rewarded. It's like climbing up a mountain with little oxygen.

Change-making is not about you

This isn't about me as an individual and I never do interviews were I can't talk about the children. I will never compromise on fighting for children.

The children give me hope

After 19 years, you start seeing the results - a lot of the children are doing brilliantly, some are at college, some are in jobs, some are incredible parents. I know that this way of working works and that gives me greater confidence to fight for more children.

There will come a time when I can't do this anymore

I have health problems I have had since I was a child, so there is a time limit to this. Change-making is like being part of a relay race and I'm still doing my leg. I know I'm not magical though.

I'm a peaceful person, which helps me cope with life's difficulties

I do get upset, my mother died recently and we were very close. I'm not entitled to not get upset. People sometimes say, 'Why me?' I say, 'Why not?' When you experience a blow, you ride it just as much as you delight in the joy. When I cry, I cry, when I worry, I worry, but I don't catastrophise. I think it all comes from an understanding that you're not that important; you're just a small part of a massive nature.

Having a sense of humour will see you through anything

I don't take myself seriously, but I have serious things to do. I try to remain in touch with humbleness. Try to understand that however small you are, you have the power to do more.

Interview by @ella__alexander.

See Camila Batmanghelidjh talk at Innocent Unplugged festival from 24 - 24 May. Visit innocentunplugged.com for more details. To show your support for Kids Company click here.

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