Lauryn Oates

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Biographical Details

"She is the founder of the Vancouver (1999) and Montreal (2001) Chapters of the non-profit solidarity network, Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan and is currently their Projects Director... She managed the CIDA-funded Women's Rights in Afghanistan Fund and other projects supporting women's movements in the Middle East and Central Asia from 2002-2006 at the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development. In 2004 she conceived Ideaccess, which translated and distributed human rights and women’s rights resources into Arabic, Farsi and other languages free of charge in the Middle East and Central Asia. In 2006 Ideaccess was a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge, receiving honourable mention at the Nobel Hall in Stockholm. She is a founding member and a senior advisor to the Canada Afghanistan Solidarity Committee and a past coordinator of the Funders' Network for Afghan Women. She has also helped write a manual for women on financial planning for Dress for Success Worldwide; and written numerous reports on Afghanistan for organizations such as Global Rights, medica mondiale, the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, and Womankind Worldwide.

"Lauryn holds a BA Honours in International Development Studies from McGill University, an MA in Human Security and Peacebuilding from Royal Roads University, and is a PhD candidate in Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia...

"She is the recipient of several awards and distinctions, including the 2000 Chatelaine Women of the Year, the 2001 National Post/L’Oréal Canada Women of Influence, and a YTV Achievement Awards finalist for Public Service. In 2008, The Globe & Mail named her as the first of Ten Canadians to Watch in 2009. She has called Vancouver, Montreal and New York home, but now lives in a shack on the top of a bluff on a small island off the BC coast with an attractive carpenter named Brad and her mutt, Sam."

Publications

• IN PRESS. State of the art: Women in the new Afghan arts scene. In (Eds. Ashraf Zahedi and Jennifer Heath) Women of Afghanistan in the post 9/11 era: Paths to empowerment. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.