Welsh Women’s Aid is very pleased to welcome the following new staff members to the Cardiff Team:

Sally Hughes joined us on the 18th August as the new Engagement and Participation Officer. In her new post she will be creating opportunities for women, children and young people to inform policy and practice through developing a Wales wide ‘Voices Network’. This will include things like a forum on the website where women can share stories and support each other, the recruitment of a number of ‘Champions’, women who have experienced domestic abuse or whom have other interests in supporting our work, who can work with the media and who can shape decision making by taking part in consultations, for instance.  You can contact her on [email protected] and follow her activities on Twitter @WWA_engagement.

Sally has a background in Equality and Diversity, her previous experience in the education sector involved raising awareness of equality issues, consulting with students and staff, developing action plans and producing resources. She has over 10 years’ experience of teaching. For her Masters she wrote about the ways in which social media has had an impact on women’s participation in Feminism.  Her commitment to inclusion brings her to WWA, as well as her feminist values.

Rhiannon Maniatt , joined on the 1st September as our new Membership and Policy Data Administrator. Her role will include developing and implementing organisational databases, proactively collecting, collating and analysing data and producing reports as well as providing general admin support to the Membership and Policy team. You can contact her on [email protected]

Rhiannon says that after experiencing domestic abuse first hand throughout her teenage years, she decided to dedicate her life to helping others and work towards qualifications that would help her do so. After taking a gap year, where she worked in HR for Cardiff Council, she studied Education and Criminology as her undergraduate degree at Cardiff University. She took some modules on DV, which were given by Dr Amanda Robinson and fuelled her desire to end violence against women. During this time, she worked for a substance abuse charity and got to witness even more of the trials that women are put through in their lives. She is currently finishing her Masters in Social Science Research Methods and Criminology, and has taken this role with WWA to embark on a career of striving to end all forms of violence against women and children.