Andrea Des Marais

Andrea works with the Global Action Youth Network as the Community Engagement Coordinator for the South American Regional Headquarters. She studied international economics and development at an undergraduate level and is therefore very interested in the relationship between poverty and trade relations. She was recently inspired to develop a trade strategy for GYAN – the primary strategy of this is to help local groups working on issues involving food security, employment creation, environment protection and HIV/AIDS to become more aware of the relevance of trade practices to their work. Andrea wishes to connect and support groups already working on trade issues and to increase the engagement of youth with international trade policy. Andrea wishes to develop a strategy to combat the current practices of international trade as she believes this is a critical factor in alleviating poverty, hunger, disease and violence. She believes that participation in this training course will allow her a better a sense of the current issues created by and facing the WTO as well as the work of different groups around the world and the opportunities, techniques and challenges of trade related advocacy.