about

For a year between 2021 and 2022, while I was in university, I worked with a health start-up called VitaeGUM (now, The A-Day). 

VitaeGUM produced chewing gum that was both teeth-cleaning and infused with vitamins. We were targeting bringing this product to humanitarian settings with limited access to potable water, as well as to homeless drug addicts, who have high rates of dental issues.

I was responsible for determining our strategy for reaching refugee populations, and to do this I conducted fieldwork across 3 camps. Through interviews with stakeholders and camp residents I developed a roadmap for distribution to the camps.

My biggest finding was how bad nutrition was in the places I was visiting. This led me to believe that our product wasn't addressing the right issue: the poor diet that was causing knock-on health problems.

For 3 months in 2022, I interned with the Global Development Incubator to research on the employment prospects of refugees, with a focus on East Africa. I lived primarily in Nairobi, but also visited organisations working out of Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement, Uganda.

I was struck by the lack of data informing many of the skilling programs that I came across. This led to large oversupplies of similar skillsets and ultimately many unemployed or underemployed individuals. I designed and proposed an apprenticeship program for East African refugees to create pathways to jobs, but this was not picked up.

I came away from these 3 months disheartened by the scale of need and the lack of corresponding absorption capacity that receiving countries had for displaced individuals. If there weren't enough jobs for locals, what chance did refugees have? 

In 2024, I wrote my master's thesis on China's Poverty Alleviation Resettlement (PAR) programs. The PAR is the Chinese government's means of relocating individuals from remote locations to more urban areas, where they are better able to provide them with access to basic necessities. This program has played a large part in China's poverty alleviation goals.

I was interested in this topic because I thought China could serve as a good case-study for planned relocation  projects that will become necessary as climate migration picks up in the coming years. Most people I spoke to were very positive about the relocations, though I also came away with the impression that older people struggled to adapt to the new environments. 

Through this thesis, I learnt ethnographic skills and was able to do research in  Chinese. However, I was also often in trouble with the local police while I backpacked across Sichuan, Chongqing, and Yunnan provinces.