Training Officer: Carla Garnelas

Carla joined IARS as a Training Officer (consultant) in January 2008. Since graduating from Edinburgh University with a degree in Social Anthropology in 2002, Carla Garnelas has been working in the voluntary sector in London. As a development worker she set up a youth volunteering project in East London, working with BME teenagers in Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets and developing volunteering placements in the local community.

In 2006, she received an MSc from Birkbeck College in Race and Ethnic Relations, focusing on issues of gender, ethnicity and identity. She has a particular interest in current debates around forced marriage and the representations of British-Muslim women in the media.

She currently works for the Children's Rights Alliance for England on the Get ready for Geneva project. Her role includes developing and delivering training for young people on children's human rights and campaigning, supporting children's self advocacy on children's rights issues and engaging children and young people in reporting to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. She has recently worked with children and young people on responding to the Discrimination Law Review, focusing on issues of age discrimination in relation to under 18s.

She has also worked for over 15 years in the Jewish community as a youth worker and informal educator and spent a year in Nairobi, Kenya with VSO working with an umbrella organization offering support and capacity building to projects working with street children.