Emma joined EdUKaid as a volunteer in January 2021. She is also a part-time Sponsorship Communications Volunteer for Plan International and works in Local Government as a Community Transport Project Officer.

She has an LLM in Human Rights Law from the University of Edinburgh and an LLB in Law from Durham University. Having led and managed volunteer projects in Fiji working towards Fiji’s Sustainable Development Plan, Emma found her passion for human rights advocacy and international development. This led to a swift career change from commercial law to the not-for-profit sector!

During her Masters she specialised in children’s rights and gender and development. Her knowledge of NGO work in Tanzania was deepened during her Masters dissertation. This involved conducting socio-legal research on the extent to which Microfinance projects in Tanzania alleviates women’s discrimination as unpaid carers. Here, Emma concluded that both Microfinance discourse and projects have failed to cater for unpaid care work within their design and evaluations of women’s empowerment.

Emma is a firm believer in the right to education as an empowerment right, the need for a gender perspective and for development projects to be community led. Therefore, EdUKaid interests Emma where the organisation’s values align with her own. EdUKaid’s focus on girls as the main beneficiaries of their projects is important to Emma given the disproportionate challenges girls face globally to human rights realisation. After all, girls’ rights are human rights. Emma is currently spending her time with EdUKaid researching and writing blogs, her latest focusing on how EdUKaid’s Heshima Project works to remove the toxic trio of period poverty.

Read Emma's latest blog Making Periods Visible in Tanzania by Emma Howell