Hello everyone! My name is Alyssa Esparaz and this year, I will be staying in Toronto, working for Compassion Canada’s Marketing and Communications Team. In my role as Writer & Communicator, I will be, well... writing and communicating! I will be creating content for various platforms with the goal of educating and raising awareness about child poverty, the Church’s role in development, and Compassion’s work in 25 countries in the Global South. I am excited to build my skills as a communicator this year, and develop new, relevant and innovative ways to effectively communicate international development topics and initiatives to a wide variety of audiences.
The proposed focus my research is the Church’s role in international development. I hope to examine the ways in which Christian faith-based international development initiatives are conceptualized, understood, and carried out by various actors and stakeholders. Given the history of the Church in the Global South and the vast number of faith-based organizations operating today, I am looking forward to deepening my understandings of the theologies of development and the development practice of the global Church.
Overall, I am thrilled to have this opportunity as part of the Centre for Critical Development Studies. I am so thankful to be working for an organization that I love, doing things I love to do, and being immersed in topics that are so important to me. This journey has been incredibly enriching and exciting thus far, and I cannot wait to see what happens next! You can follow me on social media @_godsgal4ever and on my blog: www.alyssaesparaz.ca.