Our team members

Melissa has over 20 years’ experience developing and managing disability inclusive services and programmes in the UK and West Africa. She has undertaken research and numerous training courses on communicating and consulting with children and adults with intellectual disabilities to facilitate processes where everyone is enabled to have an undertanding of their rights and participate in decision making processes. Furthermore, she has designed participatory approaches with people with disabilities at all stages of the programme cycle from design to evaluation. Melissa has significant expertise on the collection, analysis and use of disability disaggregated data  within the international development and humanitarian sector by INGOS and the UN system. Melissa has an MA in English Literature and a Postgraduate Certificate in Community Development with a focus on conducting research into community organisations working on disability inclusion and action research with persons with complex disabilities using augmentative communication methods. Melissa has also advised on Institutional Funding and is highly familiar with a range of donors that are currently supporting disability inclusion programmes globally. Since making the transition to consultancy, Melissa has worked with a number of key organisations who strive to increase the inclusion of people with disabilities including the International Disability Alliance, Sightsavers, Humanity and Inclusion, the European Disability Forum, the International Committee of the Red Cross, CBM Global, ATScale and Elrha.

As the parent and sibling of young people with complex disabilities, Melissa is a seasoned and passionate advocate of the rights of people with disabilities. The high points of her career focus on interventions where there has been a direct and sustainable impact on strengthening the inclusion of people with disabilities. Melissa spent close to 4 years working alongside organisations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) in Burkina Faso where she supported the implementation of inclusive education and employment programmes and strengthened the skills of OPDs to self-advocate. Having identified the failure of many mainstream NGOs in Burkina to include people with disabilities in their development programmes, Melissa worked with OPDs to create a programme delivering  disability rights training to NGOs whilst simultaneously providing good governance and disability rights training to 35 other OPDs. As a direct result of the training many NGOs began consulting with people with disabilities to identify their needs and adapted their programmes accordingly. Along with OPD leaders she co-developed a national advocacy programme whereby people with disabilities delivered awareness raising sessions on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) to local authorities and NGOs in 45 provinces across Burkina. She also co-created a drop-in centre that people with disabilities and their families access for advice and support and which supports them to access education, healthcare, assistive devices and training and employment opportunities.

In order to strengthen the progress made towards disability inclusion in Burkina Faso, Melissa co-founded a UK based charity, LAFI Burkina, which supports OPDs to implement advocacy, inclusive education and sustainable livelihood programmes.

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