Hoda Ali is a nurse and human rights activist defending the rights of girls through working and campaigning to end

female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom Female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom is the ritual removal of some or all of the external female genitalia of women and girls living in the UK. According to Equality Now and City University London, an estimated 103,000 women and girls age ...

. She works as a Community Outreach Project Manager for Safeguarding in Perivale Primary School, one of the first schools to set up an outreach programme on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a practice carried out on young girls normally up to age. Ali believes education is very important for preventing FGM.

Life and work

Ali underwent FGM in Somalia at the age of 7. Complications she has endured since then include acute hospitalisations, inability to have children and early menopause. She now campaigns against female genital mutilation including that carried out by medical professionals. In 2014 Ali co-founded the Vavengers, an FGM awareness-raising group. Their first event funded 'It happens here', a campaign of billboards in Islington and Ealing. This campaign won the CLIO Award for Advertiser of the Year in 2015, and Ali was delegated to New York to accept the prize on behalf of the advertising agency

Ogilvy Mather Ogilvy is a New York City-based British advertising, marketing, and public relations agency. It was founded in 1850 by Edmund Mather as a London-based agency. In 1964, the firm became known as Ogilvy & Mather after merging with a New York City ag ...

. In March 2018 she was nominated as an Amnesty International Human Rights Defender, and appears on the Suffragette Spirit Map. She is a trustee for 28TooMany, a registered charity established "to undertake research and provide knowledge and tools to those working to end FGM in the countries in Africa where it is practised and across the diaspora worldwide".

Media appearances

In 2013 Ali appeared in 'The Cruel Cut', a BAFTA-nominated

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

documentary about female genital mutilation presented by psychotherapist and activist

Leyla Hussein Leyla Hussein ( so, Leyla Xuseen) is a Somali-born British psychotherapist and social activist. She is the founder of Dahlia project,"'FGM is violence, child abuse and sexual assault' – Leyla Hussein",''The London Economic'', 8 September 201 ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ali, Hoda Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Somalian emigrants to the United Kingdom British nurses British human rights activists British women human rights activists Activists against female genital mutilation Victims of human rights abuses Somalian health activists Violence against women in Somalia

Life and work

Media appearances

See also

References