A Voice For the Voiceless
The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change. We recruit graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.
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Laura Gordon and Survivor Corps Burundi
The Graduate Institutute, Geneva
Laura Gordon will be working with SurvivorCorps, based in Bujumbura, Burundi. SurvivorCorps is a network of local organisations that aims to help support victims of conflict, and use their experiences to promote peace. SurvivorCorps evolved from the Landmine Survivors’ Organisation, which has been active since 1997 and was a major player in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. They operate by promoting peer support, whereby disabled survivors of war help others in a similar position to cope with their disability, as well as advocating for peace and disabled rights at a local and global level.
She looks forward to working with SurvivorCorps because they work on behalf of people who are doubly vulnerable, having been exposed to violence, and often displacement, and having an additional level of vulnerability - in Burundi, they work with women who have been subjected to gender-based violence. People affected by war are often seen as homogenous, leading to ‘one-size-fits-all’ aid packages that do not meet individuals’ needs, so she looks forward to helping SurvivorCorps promote the additional needs of these women. On top of this, she agrees with SurvivorCorps’ philosophy that the victims of war are uniquely able to promote peace, and looks forward to helping them take that message to a wider audience.
A key part of SurvivorCorps’ work is advocacy, where they aim to use the experiences of survivors of war to break the cycle of violence worldwide. As Laura will be the first Advocacy Project Fellow to work in Burundi, she will be trying to establish a mutually beneficial relationship, as well as helping disabled survivors of war to promote peace and advocate for disabled rights by teaching them how to use ICT tools in their work.
In 2006 Laura graduated from the University of Oxford with a 1st Class degree in Modern History. While in Oxford she gained her first media experience by working on The Oxford Student Newspaper. After graduating she worked in Uganda as a research intern for the Uganda Human Rights Commission, before returning to the UK and working for a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, doing freelance research on African issues, working as a research and advocacy intern for the One World Trust, and researching political campaign techniques, including internet-based campaigning, for a new wiki on the subject. She has also previously worked as an English teacher in Côte d’Ivoire in 2002 and Thailand in 2003.
Laura is currently enrolled in a Masters of International Affairs degree at The Graduate Institute, Geneva, where she is specialising in conflict and post-conflict reconstruction.
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