Sophia Collis is from Bermuda and will be volunteering at CECAD for three months from September to December 2019. Earlier this year, she graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, with a Bachelor’s degree in International Development. She spent her summer at home volunteering at the Bermuda Environmental Sustainability Taskforce (BEST), where she conducted research on plastics and helped formulate policy that would lead to plastic reduction in Bermuda. With her passion for environmentalism, Sophia has strong interests in the fields of sustainable development and environmental management and hopes to continue her studies in Europe or the UK. She hopes to enhance her analytical and practical skills, while gaining a deeper understanding of the nature, causes and impacts of major types of environmental change, as well as the economic, social, legal, and ethical underpinnings of environmental responsibility and systemic solutions within different organizational contexts. In the coming year, she hopes to travel and continue doing volunteer work with a social and environmental purpose.
Danielle Elliott
Danielle Elliott is an Australian who is volunteering with CECAD from July to September 2013. While living in Sydney the past two years, she has volunteered with The Hunger Project Australia, The Starlight Children’s Foundation and Vision Australia. Since graduating from high school she has gained professional experience in publishing, event planning, business development and human resources. Before beginning tertiary studies in 2014, Danielle is taking time to travel South East Asia and Australia’s eastern coast.
Alexandra Ibragimova
Alexandra Ibragimova has been volunteering with CECAD since February 2016. She holds a Master degree in Environmental Sciences and Policy from Central European University (Budapest, Hungary). Since graduating she has gained professional experience in biodiversity conservation, environmental policy and sustainable resource management. Before joining CECAD, Alexandra worked as a chief officer at Directorate for Protected Areas under the Ministry of Natural resources and Environment of her home region (Krasnoyarsk, Russia) where she administrated the establishment of new protected area.
Alondra Maradiaga
Alondra Maradiaga is from Sinaloa, Mexico. She holds a bachelor degree in Political Science from the Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology, commonly known as ITAM (Mexico City).
Since graduating, Alondra has gained professional experience in both public and private sectors. Before volunteering with CECAD, she worked at the Mexican Ministry of the Interior where she oversaw the national programme “Access to Justice for Women”; and at the Ministry of Education, where she was in charge of the Department of Higher Education Scholarships and had the honour to offer studying opportunities to vulnerable students.
Her interests lie in socio-economic development, gender equality, and crime prevention policies. Alondra aspires to formulate a strategy that effectively contributes to improving the livelihood of Mexican farmworkers and women who live in rural areas.
Jessica Reynolds
Major of Study: Bachelor of Regional and Town Planning at The University of Queensland, Australia
Job: Town Planner at Hayes Anderson Lynch Architects
Duration in Hanoi: 1 month ( Feb 01 – Feb 28/ 2012)
Main Task at CECAD: Preparing project proposals to gain funding from international organisations that offer grants to NGOs. Visited project sites at Tu Ne and Thanh Hoi communes and discussed environmental issues with local community members.
Review: I loved working with CECAD, the staff are extremely helpful and welcoming. I learnt so much from my short time here and would recommend future volunteers try to obtain a placement with this NGO.
Robyn Kirk
Robyn Kirk is a Canadian volunteer working with CECAD for two months beginning mid-September 2013. She holds a Bachelors degree in History and Political Science from the University of Western Ontario. Her interests lie in socio-economic development and she will be pursuing a Masters of Public Management January 2014.
Hanh Thi Van Nguyen
Hanh Thi Van Nguyen completed her MA in Development and Environment at Ohio University, USA in 2012. Her research focuses on forest conservation and natural resource management models in Vietnam. Specifically, she studied social influences on these models, especially livelihoods of communities who were paid for Forest Environment Services. From this, she will develop solutions for natural conservation and community development in mountainous areas in Vietnam.
Camilla Engborg
April 2016
Sweden
Kate Davis
Kate Davis is a British volunteer from the south of England, UK, volunteering with CECAD for the month of April 2012. She has a Bachelor of Laws degree in Law & Criminology from the University of Sheffield, England. Kate is currently taking time out of work to travel Asia and South America.
Adrien
After obtaining his Master’s degree in sustainable development law at Université Paris Descartes – France, Adrien has worked at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris (France) in the Education for Sustainable Development Section (ED/PSD/ESD) where he occupied the position of Monitoring and Evaluation Assistant, which allowed him to acquire new insights into the various and contrasting work environments often found in large international organizations.
Following his experience at UNESCO Headquarters, Adrien joined the UNESCO Office in Viet Nam as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Programme Officer to support the implementation of the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), UNESCO and Samsung Education for Sustainable Development Initiative, a major country-level ESD programme resulting from the global public-private partnership between UNESCO and Samsung. His primary responsibilities were focused on developing e-learning courses and other training materials on sustainability-related themes including climate change, biodiversity conservation and disaster risk reduction. As part of this Initiative, he also contributed to support local communities of Thua Thien-Hue Province in developing Community Action Plans (CAPs) for sustainable development, empowering them to respond to their local sustainability challenges. Given his educational background in law, he was also appointed as lead officer and focal point to manage copyrights and permits of materials provided by national and international partners to be used by UNESCO.
The successes and achievements of the Initiative have been shared by the Ministry of Education and Training of Viet Nam in the ESD World Conference held in Aichi Nagoya (Japan).
Since June 2015, Adrien has been working as an independent consultant for a few Vietnamese NGOs and has joined the programme TOPICA NATIVE to work as an English teacher.
Tran Tram Anh
Tran Tram Anh (Tramie) is currently a boarding student enrolled at Brooks School in the United States. She has had experiences working in various leadership positions including the Core Team of US Boarding School Conference Hanoi and Brooks’ Student Government. In summer 2015, she worked as a volunteer for Humanitarian Services for Children of Vietnam organizing her very own fashion workshop.Tramie also actively participates in fighting for social justice at her school and she is also passionate about debating. She has earned herself two Best Delegate awards at VN Model United Nations and US Embassy’s Model East Asia Summit as well as being chosen as Brooks’ 2016 Law Day Representative. She looks forward to be a supportive learn while working with CECAD by helping people to further widen her knowledge and vision for future social work.
Jessica Siddall
Jessica Siddall is a Canadian volunteer, who volunteered with CECAD for the months of February, March and April 2017. She is currently a student at the University of Winnipeg, obtaining her degree in International Development. This volunteer experience is a part of her degree’s practicum placement in which Jessica is able to gain real life experience to use throughout the rest of her degree.
