Around International Women’s Day recently, the PRT here had a number of female-focussed visits, including Baroness Warsi and the NATO Secretary General’s wife. Earlier in the same week, Justine Greening, the DFID Secretary of State gave a speech on the importance of tackling violence against women and girls in Afghanistan. Sat at my desk in the Helmand PRT [...]

Do you have your own special space where you feel free? When I'm in the pool it’s 'Becky’s World' and no matter what is going on around me, I can just be myself. And in Zambia I visited a place where women - against all odds - can also be free to be themselves. Handling expectation is [...]

In Zambia one in four people live in slums. Finding regular work is really difficult and many families are forced to go hungry. Parents often can't send their children to school because there's not enough money to put food on the table, let alone buy uniforms and school books. In fact, when I recently visited [...]

Given current events in eastern DRC it seems strange to be writing about anything else. M23’s capture of Goma and ongoing push to the South has been widely covered in the international press (Reuters’ coverage has been particularly good). I left Bukavu on Wednesday, after M23 announced it was their next target and students protested [...]

Hands up who thought slavery and the slave trade was abolished years ago? Perhaps even centuries ago? In fact, despite being illegal in almost every country on earth, slavery exists nearly everywhere, and in staggering numbers. The International Labour Organisation estimates that nearly 21 million people are forced to live in slavery today. That's around the [...]

I travelled to Tanzania to see how Comic Relief and the British government are working together to change the lives of young girls. They co-fund projects through The Common Ground Initiative, which supports Diaspora organisations set up and run by people with strong African heritage. Children's Dignity Forum, in Musoma, Tanzania, is supported through this initiative by [...]

Skill. Ability. Discipline. If becoming a sportsman is hard work, becoming a sportswoman in Zambia is even tougher. You need the mental strength to challenge the assumptions of nearly everyone around you, including your own family. Sharon Museke, who I first met at the 2006 Toronto World AIDS Summit, embodies these qualities. In Sharon's community, [...]

Today I write this blog as Chief Executive of JITA - a globally groundbreaking Non-Governmental Organisation/private sector hybrid. However, my title wasn't always so business-like. I used to work for CARE International, in charge of Bangladesh's Rural Sales Programme (RSP). The RSP was born out of necessity, when we at CARE found ourselves in a [...]

I've been back in the UK for five days, during which I've desperately missed Ethiopia. The last few weeks of my time there were hectic, but incredible: here are some highlights from that period. All the female members of the team took part in the Choice Women First 5km run, which was part of Addis' [...]

As we celebrate Mother's Day, and the deadline approaches for reaching the Millennium Development Goal of reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters, it is worth considering that giving birth in some countries still remains one of the most dangerous things a woman can do. I remember once trekking with a friend in a remote mountain region [...]