Dr.Helen Pope has a Ph.D. in Latin from Monash University, Melbourne. Her love of Classics led her to make her home in Italy, where she has lived since 1981, teaching Classics at both University and High School levels. She began her volunteer work in 2001 in the Middle East, and co-directed an International Work Camp in Aida Refugee Camp in the West Bank every summer for 12 years. She first volunteered in Rwanda in 2009 at a preschool, and made a chance visit across to the border to Goma where she met Kizungu Hubert, and visited his orphanage. She determined from that first meeting to find ways to help Kizungu in his efforts to improve the lives of the orphaned children and vulnerable communities in his area. She has visited both Rwanda and DRC every year since 2009, and has taken high school students to work at a local school in Rwanda for 2 weeks every summer in a volunteer programme that she and a Rwandan friend set up. She has visited the Tchukudu Family in Goma every year, witnessed the wonderful progress made, and fallen in love with Idjwi Island and its people. Helen has also taken students to volunteer at 2 orphanages in Megalaya in India, and she has worked as a volunteer with refugees in Jordan, Lesbos and northern Greece.
