During my time at the WONDER Foundation, I undertook a range of projects both individual and within a team to support the charities mission. The WONDER Foundation serves women, girls, and their community across the globe to provide quality education to change their lives and exit poverty. Equal access to education is something I am passionate about as I believe it provides such a wealth of opportunity to those in receipt of it. Therefore, working at the WONDER Foundation was a great experience for me to begin to understand how to make a change. Some of the projects that I worked on include travel safety for young girls on their journey to school and the subsequent impact on their education. This research focused on girls in Abidjan, Gurugram, Zambrano, and Lagos. However, the main research project that I worked on included research on certain disabilities with the aim of looking at how the charity could become more inclusive with the work they do, the support they provide and the organisations that they work with. The locations that I focused on were Nigeria, Kenya, Philippines, and Guatemala, in each looking at factors such as prevalence, severity, stigma and support. Both projects helped me to develop my research skills, particularly as there were areas of both that has little and/or unreliable data. This was unfamiliar to me and so pushed my skills, which at times was frustrating to keep hitting dead ends, but it caused me to adopt different approaches and think creatively.

I believe that the most important work that I did whilst at WONDER was the document I produced on potential suitable funders, as this will have a sustained positive impact. Using a database, I indicated which funders WONDER met the criteria for funding grants. Whilst a lengthy task, I learnt how important projects such as these are, as sourcing funding is a big (and often difficult) part of charity work that is often overlooked. Charities such as WONDER can only make such an impact when there are funds available to support their work and the organisations that they partner with. It was never something I had considered prior to my time at WONDER, nor how challenging it would be to find potential suitable funders, even before you could apply for anything!

One of the main personal take aways from this experience was improving my adaptability skills. With my university work I like to work to a specific schedule and due to the type of academic work I undertake, I rarely have to alter this as deadlines are presented far in advance with unchangeable requirements. Hence, having to change my plan mid-way through was something I wasn’t too familiar with. So, over my time at WONDER I learnt to be more adaptable as the work could often shift priorities very quickly and so we would need to respond in an efficient manner whilst balancing a range of tasks.

I think that my understating of leadership has changed over the past year through my experience at WONDER and through the wider Laidlaw Programme. I have come to realise that leadership is not about one person in charge and everyone else following their commands. That it is much more collaborative and a dialogue between everyone in the team, as this is beneficial for all. Overall, I had a great experience at the WONDER Foundation. I learnt a lot during my Leadership in Action project, about leadership, education, charity work and also myself.