Elif joined ALDA as the Interim Project Assistant in May 2024 to support the “We Act” Project in the MEA Project Management Department, in Vicenza, Italy.
She holds a Master of Arts degree on Human Rights and Multi-level Governance at the University of Padova in Italy, which followed after a Bachelor of Sciences degree in International Relations from Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Türkiye. She has specialized in sustainability, advocacy, human rights governance, international organizations, and human rights protection of children, women, refugees, and other vulnerable groups. Throughout her master’s thesis, she also made a centenary analysis on Forced Labour, Human Trafficking, Modern Slavery and the response of the International Labour Organization.
During her studies, she interned in the Research Center for Asylum and Migration in Ankara, Türkiye, in which she was responsible for the editorial research, projects
assistance, advocacy and partnership building, regarding the rights of refugees, and the other vulnerable groups, including children and women. She was also a language teaching and cultural volunteer in the Belarus Association of Unesco Clubs and the Committee of Kaunas, respectively in Belarus and Lithuania, throughout AIESEC, therefore, she actively supported different projects on Sustainable Development Goal Target 4: Quality Education, with a specific focus on the supply of qualified teachers in developing world and the number of people with relevant skills for financial success.
Before joining ALDA, she was a volunteer and fundraising organizer in the CDS Kenya, and she supported a Project on Women and Girls’ Education by focusing on donor relations and fundraising in the United States, Europe and China, while assisting the social media strategy and research.
As a Turkish native speaker, she is fluent in English and has an intermediate level of Italian, which she has been improving day to day in Italy. She is also a current learner of French.