Maud Lepaon (MA International Politics and Human Rights, 2021) always knew she wanted a career focused on making the world a better place for everybody, and working for the Rainforest Foundation UK, she is able to combine her passion for human rights and the environment. This spring, Maud was the winner of the Social Action Award in the National British Council Study UK Alumni Awards in France.
“I have never seen myself working in the private sector and participating in our capitalist world,” Maud Lepaon says. “I always wanted to defend people who can’t use their voice loudly enough to be heard by deciding stakeholders who have the power to improve those people’s lives.”
Maud is a Monitoring and Rights Project Coordinator at Rainforest Foundation UK and has the opportunity to engage with two of her favourite topics: human rights and environmental protection.
“The environmental aspect came a little bit later,” she says. “But as the years go by, I think a lot of young people from my generation see the climate and planet degrading, and we feel useless or incompetent.”
In her work, Maud tries to look at the issues from a different perspective, which gives her more of a voice.
“I do feel like environmental advocacy has been treated as a scientific thing, and actions taken on climate change have only been covering what needs to be done scientifically and never what needs to be done on a human rights level,” she says, giving the examples of forest preservation, reduction of CO2, and using cleaner energy sources.
“That is what I wanted to pursue: advocating for climate actions that encompass the human rights aspect of it. Environmental conservation is not feasible nor effective if the human rights of the people contributing to its conservation are violated.”
When Maud made the decision to pursue a postgraduate degree, she knew she wanted an experience that would improve her English. London, within easy access from France, seemed like a no-brainer. Having been accepted to most of the London-based universities she applied to, she chose City St George’s because of the course the University offered.
“It was exactly what I wanted to study,” Maud says.
“Studying at City was truly interesting. The learning experience was so different from the one I was used to. The thing I loved the most was the spaces for discussion created by the teachers to make us all exchange our ideas and thoughts on specific topics.”
Maud experienced bad luck in embarking on her course during Covid, which meant she did all of her classes online and had to forgo the campus experience, but she is still positive about her studies.
“The teachers were really adaptive in this time period, and the classes were still very interesting.”
Maud chose to write her thesis about Baka communities and how their rights are violated in parallel to environmental conservation.
“Still today, the Indigenous communities in the Congo Basin struggle with so many issues. A few of them being not having land titles to prove they are Indigenous to the land, being violated for entering protected forests (which have always been theirs in theory), not having sustainable livelihoods because of deforestation …” Maud explains.
“Those topics are really close to my heart, and I think that’s what inspired me the most.”
With that in mind, it was serendipitous that Maud would then spend almost a year with France Volontaires’ FORESTS program in Cameroon and meet one Baka community.
“I had the unique opportunity to meet with them in their village to talk about their lifestyle and the issues they were encountering. That was the best part of my experience in Cameroon; they were so interesting and were so keen to raise awareness on their issues and difficulties in today’s world.”
Maud encourages everyone to try something that might at first seem outside of their comfort zone.
“I learned so many things about the country itself, the socio-cultural context, the different cultures and ethnicities,” she says. “I also learned a lot about myself, and it helped me strengthen so many skills, like intercultural professional skills, patience, diplomacy, and technical skills, like forestry, environmental laws and advocacy. More than anything, it made me even more open-minded and aware of a lot of complex issues and societal topics.”
Since her experience with Frances Volontaires, Maud has been involved in several forest preservation initiatives, and with Rainforest Foundation UK, she now utilises all of her academic knowledge and volunteering experiences professionally, with Cameroon and Kenya as her portfolio.
“A lot of my work involves monitoring illegalities, which can happen in forests and human rights violations of Indigenous and local communities living in and around forests,” Maud says.
“In Cameroon and more largely in the Congo Basin, we have been working on real-time monitoring of the forests with a tool called ForestLink. It basically allows our local partners and local community observers to alert and monitor any illegalities that might have happened in the forests. We are also supporting our local partners and communities in raising concerns to either legal bodies or policy bodies in the country by taking advocacy action to improve forestry laws and Indigenous & local communities’ rights.
“In Kenya, the work is quite similar as we also use a monitoring tool, but this time called Haki Ardhi, which helps our local partners monitor women’s rights violations towards securing lands.”
This spring, Maud won the Social Action Award at the National British Council Study UK Alumni Awards in France. What did this mean to her?
“It was such a surprise,” she says. “It’s really rewarding to see that what you have done until now is recognised in a way! I sometimes suffer from impostor syndrome, so having this award reminds me that I can trust my abilities and skills. And I am glad to have also won the opportunity to do some type of professional development experience with the cash prize.”
What is Maud’s advice to students or graduates who would like a similar professional career to her own?
“To be honest, the international relations sector as a whole is very clogged; there are very few opportunities, and most of those don’t leave a chance for young people with hardly any experience, which is such a shame,” she says.
“The only advice I can give is to volunteer in the sector you want to work in. Even if it’s just volunteering in your own city at the Red Cross, it is still a very valuable experience to put forward when wanting to work in this sector. But ultimately, try to enrol in official volunteering experiences abroad, I say official to avoid voluntourism, either in the country or continent you want to work in later or within the thematic area you like the most: education, health, environment, culture, etc. The moment you have experience in the field, it is way easier to find jobs in the sector. “
And where does Maud see herself in the future?
“I hope to continue working in the human rights and environmental advocacy sector and, together with my organisation and others, achieve important changes to sustainable livelihoods for forest countries and way more sustainable consumption for Western countries. I also hope to keep on supporting the fights of Indigenous people until they are heard and listened to.”
A big congratulations to Maud Lepaon on winning the National British Council Study UK Alumni Awards in France!