My friend Jan Seed, who has died of cancer aged 69, was an activist, environmentalist and feminist. Based in Oxford for the last 30 years of her life, she developed training materials on gender and development that were the backbone of Oxfam’s bestselling Gender Training Manual, founded Leaf, an environmental action group, and played a key role in the ME/chronic fatigue syndrome support group Omega.
Jan was born in Luton, the second child and only daughter of Stephen Seed, a GP, and June (nee Barker), a nurse. Jan’s intelligence, creativity, organisational skills and warmth were evident throughout her life. As a teenager she became a committed vegetarian and feminist.
Following a degree in psychology at Manchester University she stayed in Manchester to study children’s play as a postgraduate. She later joined the co-operatively-run radical bookshop Grass Roots Books, and then Scottish and Northern Book Distribution worker’s co-op. She lived in a housing co-operative and co-parented two children.
Jan used her experience with co-operatives in a VSO placement supporting farming co-operatives in Zambia from 1984 until 1988. Typically, she is fondly remembered for supporting new volunteers and making local friends. Returning from Zambia, Jan worked voluntarily in a small team to create Returned Volunteer Action’s training resource on antiracism (Missing Links).
She was employed by Oxfam as a gender and development trainer in the Gender and Development Unit. The Unit addressed the disproportionate impoverishment and powerlessness of women in society and the importance of making women equal partners in development initiatives while addressing the many challenges of making this a reality. The Oxfam Gender Training Manual that Jan worked on has been translated into more than a dozen languages since its publication in 1994.
Jan’s commitment to social and climate justice was longstanding; she had an organic allotment in the 1970s. In recent years, she developed Leaf, a neighbourhood low carbon group for Florence Park in east Oxford.
Jan was diagnosed with ME/CFS in her early 40s, and thereafter used much of her carefully nurtured energy with Omega, the Oxfordshire ME Group for Action. She supported wide-ranging activities including campaigning for a specialist community clinic, running meditation sessions, training for professionals, a newsletter, art exhibition and poetry collection. She bore ME/CFS for 30 years with good humour and patience, prioritising friends, including Joanna Breheny, for whose early years she had been a co-parent.
In 1994, she met the love of her life, Sue Taylor. Supporting each other, they were in turn helped by Buddhist practice and community. Jan’s creativity, her many firm friendships and mindfulness practice were invaluable when ovarian cancer led to gruelling operations and hospital stays with Covid-19 restrictions.
Sue, with whom she entered into a civil partnership in 2008, likened Jan to “a meteorite blazing across the night sky, hot and bright, too soon extinguished, but leaving an after-image on our souls”.
Jan is survived by Sue, Joanna, and her three brothers, David, Paul and Rick.
