Ann-Marie Wilson is a CMS mission partner working with Restored to campaign against female genital mutilation (FGM) across Africa.
She works in health education, psycho-social counselling and capacity building local communities.
She also maps local practice and health data for sharing across the 28 African countries where FGM is still practised.
Ann-Marie worked in human resources after graduating in business studies from Manchester Metropolitan University. After 12 years in corporate life, she set up her own not-for-profit HR consultancy firm which she ran for 10 years. During that time, she took a three month sabbatical to Indo-China, to see the needs of developing countries.
Returning to the UK in 2000, she started volunteering with Medair, a Christian relief charity in their headquarters in Switzerland, and worked with them in Kosovo, North and South Sudan, North Uganda and Kenya. While in West Darfur, she saw the impact of FGM on a 10 year old who had been raped by a soldier, and her life changed forever.
Having studied for a psychology doctorate while working overseas, she did various short term missions in Africa and Asia before going to All Nations Christian College, to specialise in Islamics, gender, anthropology and development.
During her college placement to the gender based violence unit in a Somali refugee camp, Ann-Marie felt that anti-FGM work was her confirmed calling.
Since graduating in 2009, Ann-Marie has qualified as an English teacher and studied anatomy/physiology in Pakistan. She has also studied corrective fistula surgery whilst capacity building in Nigeria as part of her internship with the African diaspora charity FORWARD that stands against FGM in UK and Africa.
Ann-Marie has a vision that communities can share their ideas through a web-enabled learning community of anti-FGM work and thus all stand together, influencing governments, UN agencies, community elders and families to help improve the health of girls and women.