Interesting fact: Emily's adventurous nature once had her swinging Tarzan-style through the cloud forest in Costa Rica!
Emily Finnie first joined the Free The Children team in 2008 as an international youth coordinator. After spending a year working with incredible young people and dedicated educators in that role, she pursued her combined love for healthy living and social responsibility within the Life in Action program that stole her heart.
Emily grew up volunteering in her parish community, at her local food bank and with the Out of the Cold program in her hometown of Brantford, Ontario. After her experience volunteering in Virginia to rebuild low-income housing destroyed by 2003’s Hurricane Isabel, Emily knew she would always make community service a big part of her life. During her time as an undergraduate student of politics and global development at Queen's University, Emily was fortunate enough to find many different avenues to strive toward this goal. She volunteered extensively, chairing her faculty society’s orientation program, serving as a big buddy to youth at-risk, and working within her student government. During this time, Emily also became a member of a student-run global health initiative of the university called Queen's Health Outreach (QHO). Through QHO, Emily travelled to Guyana on a summer-long health promotion project as a peer-educator. In partnership with the Guyana Red Cross, she visited various host communities where she facilitated health and leadership workshops with local youth on topics including HIV/AIDS, discrimination, effective communication, malaria prevention, basic nutrition, first aid and child abuse. When she later became the project’s director, she organized more sustainable outreach into several rural Guyanese communities while also strengthening ties with QHO’s local, grassroots partners. This experience allowed Emily to witness the transformative power of community health promotion, the importance of universal primary education and the extraordinary potential of youth leadership.
Emily smiles incessantly and is commonly found mid-fit of laugher. She has found that her addiction to travel has only intensified her love of all kinds of delicious international foods, some of which she’s been able to recreate in her kitchen at home! Emily is happiest when in the company of the people she loves and comes alive when being creative. A wannabe artist, poet and mountaineer, Emily believes that love can heal the planet. She thinks Ani DiFranco’s lyrics sum her up best, "I do it for the joy it brings because I'm a joyful girl. Because the world owes me nothing and we owe each other the world."