Charlotte Morgan - Global Challenges Scholar
Charlotte Morgan is twenty-three years old and lives in Aberdare. She enjoys reading, travelling and tries to give as much of her time to volunteering as possible. She currently volunteers at Glynneath Trussell Trust food bank.
She started the Global Challenges programme in January and has found it to be a truly unique course. She doesn’t have an academic background in Law – she studied History at undergraduate level - but it is a new challenge and one that she is thoroughly enjoying. She's particularly loved working with the other scholars! They’ve become close friends and have greatly inspired her with their stories.
Educational and Career Background
Charlotte graduated from Cardiff University with a First-Class Honours in BA History. She thoroughly enjoyed the research element of her degree, particularly for the dissertation. Her dissertation focused on the struggle to obtain women’s rights in Victorian Britain, a topic she is very passionate about. She was awarded the Ursula Henriques Prize Award upon graduating. Throughout her degree, she maintained a part-time job at a restaurant and became Assistant Manager for a year after graduation.
She then became a volunteer for the Welsh Centre for International Affairs, an organisation that strives to raise awareness of global challenges such as sustainability and human rights. Charlotte loved her volunteering experience at WCIA, and it was during this time that she became interested in policy-making and advocating for human rights. Part of her volunteer role involved attending Human Rights Stakeholder Group meetings which were incredibly insightful. She also took part in their Global Learning initiative, which included taking part in organising school events in Wales. One of these was the Model UN Conference, and she found it inspirational to see how passionate the pupils from every school were about solving global issues.
Areas of Expertise
Since starting the programme, Charlotte has been undertaking research into law and policy in relation to child poverty in Wales. This is part of her placement with Save the Children Wales, which she is thoroughly enjoying. This involves examining existing policies and legislation, such as the Rights of the Child (Wales) Measure 2011 and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and determining how law and policy can be harnessed to alleviate the effects of child poverty.
Her area of focus has been on how poverty during early childhood can have an adverse effect on a child’s development in the future. Save the Children’s work has shown the importance of access to quality education, adequate living standards and equal opportunities for all children. Sadly, poverty often puts these children at a disadvantage, and it is a very prevalent issue today in Wales. As Wales has a devolved government, her research area also includes how the national government corresponds with the wider UK Government. This helps to assess both the abilities and limitations of the Welsh Government in its targeting of child poverty.
Ambitions and Hopes for the Future
"My ambition for the future is to work for a charitable organisation in Wales that has a focus on global issues, in which I can help create change as part of a team. I have volunteered for charitable organisations with a focus on human rights in the past, but since starting the programme, my knowledge and experience of law and policy has expanded.
Having the opportunity to hear from policy makers on how to create impact has been incredibly insightful and motivational for what can be achieved in the future. Hearing from Secretary Clinton about her own experiences of working as a politician and diplomat has particularly been a highlight so far and was incredibly inspiring in striving towards creating change."
