FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

One of the youngest women on our list of 23 Women to Watch, 25-year-old Ash­lee Bur­nett is a fem­i­nist, ac­tivist, and ed­u­ca­tor, work­ing tire­less­ly in the hu­man­i­tar­i­an space in Trinidad for the past few years.

Through her NGO, Fem­i­nitt (found­ed in 2020), Bur­nett ad­vances com­mu­ni­ty-based ini­tia­tives, many of which fo­cus on cre­at­ing bet­ter lives for women and ad­vanc­ing gen­der jus­tice. This trans­lates to both work­ing from a grass­roots lev­el to de­mys­ti­fy the top­ics sur­round­ing men­stru­a­tion and com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al ed­u­ca­tion and ac­ti­vat­ing the po­lit­i­cal space to in­flu­ence na­tion­al pol­i­cy­mak­ing.

She is al­so the Learn­ing, Re­search, and Cre­ative Lead of Trans­form Ed­u­ca­tion, a fem­i­nist coali­tion host­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions Girls’ Trans­form Ed­u­ca­tion Ini­tia­tive, with her fo­cus be­ing on learn­ing and de­vel­op­ment strate­gies. Not one to shy away from a packed agen­da, Bu­rett is al­so a Chevening Schol­ar, present­ly en­gaged in a Mas­ters Pro­gramme at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol, pur­su­ing an MSc in Ed­u­ca­tion (Pol­i­cy and In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment).

Grow­ing up in Phoenix Park, Cou­va, Bur­nett went to Holy Faith Con­vent, but by the time she was in Low­er Six, was di­ag­nosed with epilep­sy. She was able to see a psy­chi­a­trist through the pub­lic health­care sys­tem and was al­so di­ag­nosed with clin­i­cal de­pres­sion, the on­set of which came in tan­dem with her di­ag­no­sis of epilep­sy. To man­age her ill­ness­es, Bur­nett was ad­vised to take a year off from school, af­ter which she opt­ed to go to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean, study­ing Eng­lish Lan­guage with a fo­cus on Lit­er­a­ture. Epilep­sy was the cat­a­lyst that changed her life, and she be­lieves it “taught me to start see­ing things very dif­fer­ent­ly.”

Her en­trance in­to the world of ac­tivism came as a po­et. Per­for­mance po­et­ry, which feels like a life­time ago to Bur­nett, was not on­ly a tool of ac­tivism but was a way for her to net­work and meet like-mind­ed peo­ple who were al­so in­ter­est­ed in dri­ving so­cial change. She be­lieves that when she be­gan ex­plor­ing fem­i­nist ac­tivism, with­out an ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground in the sub­ject, it was these con­nec­tions she made as a po­et that spring­board­ed her work as an ac­tivist. Mus­ing on her ex­pe­ri­ences when she start­ed vol­un­teer­ing with oth­er NGOs, she re­mem­bers ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some lev­el of ex­clu­sion, not hav­ing a for­mal back­ground in gen­der stud­ies, and not “fit­ting that im­age of a fem­i­nist that peo­ple want­ed.” This nudged her to chart her own course, and de­vel­op her NGO, Fem­i­nitt, to en­cour­age peo­ple who didn’t feel as­sured enough or suf­fi­cient­ly buoyed by aca­d­e­m­ic cre­den­tials to as­sume a wel­com­ing space in the ac­tivist are­na. “It was peo­ple trust­ing me, and valu­ing what I was able to bring to the ta­ble that got me to this point,” she said. And it helped her over­come the spir­it of im­poster syn­drome and get her NGO up and run­ning.

Over­com­ing is a sig­nif­i­cant el­e­ment of Bur­nett’s sto­ry. Fol­low­ing her epilep­sy di­ag­no­sis, she doubt­ed her abil­i­ty to live on her own and thrive in­de­pen­dent­ly, much less in a dif­fer­ent coun­try, and trav­el alone. For the last three years, she has con­sis­tent­ly dis­proven these doubts, ap­ply­ing to the Chevening pro­gramme, be­ing award­ed the schol­ar­ship for Mas­ters-lev­el study by the UK and go­ing to Bris­tol by her­self to fur­ther her ed­u­ca­tion. Be­ing aware of the trig­gers of her epilep­sy, she has been able to man­age it, over­com­ing the fear and shame that she car­ried. “I’m not my di­ag­no­sis,” she firm­ly states, “it’s some­thing that I have, but it’s not who I am.”

In 2022, Bur­nett was award­ed the CAISO Hard Head Award, which ac­knowl­edges ex­cep­tion­al lead­er­ship in ac­tivism, with ini­tia­tives that merge cre­ativ­i­ty with po­lit­i­cal en­gage­ment and ac­tivism. Her ac­com­plish­ments and work over the past few years are wor­thy of praise. One of her no­table projects fo­cused on bridg­ing the dis­con­nect be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and com­mu­ni­ties by ad­vo­cat­ing for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health and rights at com­mu­ni­ty lev­els. Af­ter reach­ing out to the vil­lage coun­cil, Bur­nett’s NGO went to the com­mu­ni­ty of Buenos Ayres in Trinidad, to host a work­shop for the coun­cil that would equip them with the da­ta, re­sources and po­ten­tial in­ter­ven­tions that could em­pow­er young adults in the com­mu­ni­ty.

The ul­ti­mate goal of the project was to pro­mote wide­spread com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al ed­u­ca­tion, lead­ing to a domi­no ef­fect of re­duc­tion of teenage preg­nan­cy. Sub­se­quent­ly, oth­er vil­lage coun­cils be­gan reach­ing out to her to do work­shops in their schools and com­mu­ni­ties. Fem­i­nitt has al­so launched care banks to make men­stru­al prod­ucts more wide­ly ac­ces­si­ble and has widened the con­ver­sa­tion around men­stru­a­tion. Part of the NGO’s goal is al­so to spread ed­u­ca­tion, chal­lenge stereo­types that lead to gen­der-based vi­o­lence and ul­ti­mate­ly cre­ate greater eq­ui­ty for all women, re­gard­less of race, class, and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

Work­ing at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el is very im­por­tant for Bur­nett. Of­ten­times she sees so­lu­tions im­posed on com­mu­ni­ties, with­out the req­ui­site con­sul­ta­tions and col­lab­o­ra­tion that form the foun­da­tion for any suc­cess­ful ac­tivist move­ment. She re­gards com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers “as equal part­ners,” and af­firms that “we aren’t serv­ing them, but we are part­ner­ing with them.” Bur­nett al­so pays strict at­ten­tion to the in­cor­po­ra­tion of in­ter­sec­tion­al­i­ty in her work. In­ter­sec­tion­al­i­ty was orig­i­nal­ly coined by aca­d­e­m­ic Kim­ber­le Cren­shaw, and is de­fined as “a metaphor for un­der­stand­ing the ways that mul­ti­ple forms of in­equal­i­ty or dis­ad­van­tage some­times com­pound them­selves and cre­ate ob­sta­cles that of­ten are not un­der­stood among con­ven­tion­al ways of think­ing.” In Bur­nett’s words, in­ter­sec­tion­al­i­ty re­quires her to sim­ply look around and ask “who is miss­ing from the room? Who is not in­volved in this di­a­logue?” She urged fel­low ac­tivists to pay at­ten­tion to all mar­gin­alised en­ti­ties’ strug­gles when con­sid­er­ing re­form, to pro­tect the rights of all.

Bur­nett is al­ready mak­ing waves as an ac­tivist at a young age. She de­scribes how she has al­ready achieved so much, “by be­ing ex­act­ly who I am.” Call­ing all women to re­lease them­selves from the pres­sures of peo­ple’s per­cep­tions, she en­cour­aged women to not be afraid to pur­sue their goals, and to “take up space, be­cause there’s no­body else like you.” As many women be­fore her, Bur­nett ad­vo­cates for the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ty sup­port. She al­ways tells her part­ner and friends thank you, be­cause she knows she couldn’t have over­come her chal­lenges with­out that strong sup­port sys­tem. “My com­mu­ni­ty holds me up, and holds me ac­count­able when I fall short, but with so much grace.” Ash­lee Bur­nett is a Woman to Watch, one of those in­cred­i­ble and unique women, who gra­cious­ly cre­ates space for every woman, and seeks the best in­ter­est and ad­vance­ment of all women.

To get in­volved

with Fem­i­nitt, send an email to fem­i­nitt@gmail.com

Fay­ola K J Fras­er is a pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are­na. She has a BA In­ter­na­tion­al (Mid­dle East­ern) Stud­ies and an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions & Diplo­ma­cy from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.