Helen Wolfson – Friends of the Earth

Helen Wolfson is international co-ordinator at Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland. She works with the other 76 Friends of the Earth groups in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and Europe to develop and run international campaigns on issues of climate justice and biodiversity loss, and to develop a strong international Friends of the Earth network.

In the last year Helen has travelled (mostly by train!) to work with groups in Denmark; USA; Honduras; Berlin; Amsterdam; Brussels and Poland to support their organizational development. Helen is currently working with fifty Friends of the Earth groups on an international campaign influencing an international agreement on climate change due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Prior to her work with Friends of the Earth, Helen worked as a campaigner with ActionAid, CAFOD and Christian Aid on international trade, debt, aid and corporate responsibility issues. She has worked closely with communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Honduras and S.E. Asia in developing international campaigns and lived in West Africa and Russia. Helen has an MA in Development Studies from the University of London, and BA (Hons) in French and Russian from Nottingham University. Her talk will focus upon the importance of language in developing grassroots to global strategies for sustainable development.