Margriet Reinders

Margriet has a Masters degree in Education from VU University in Amsterdam where she specialised in micro-economics, nutrition and habitat.
Her work experience began in 1979 in Burkina Faso in West Africa as a Dutch volunteer with SNV, where she worked with women’s organisations to set up primary health care services in communities. Following this she was a technical assistant in various women and development programs, and later in gender and development programs in West Africa in various sectors: agriculture, water, micro credit and livelihood generation.

In 1997 she started her own social enterprise in hand woven cotton products in a small village near Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. She trained 40 women in weaving and dyeing and producing high quality hand made products. This enterprise has been taken over by the women and is still a successful social business where 80 women are employed.

Margriet’s affiliation with GWA began in 2007 as a member and resource person and trainer for Gender and IWRM/WASH trainings and workshops in West and Central Africa. In 2008 she went to Ghana to work for MDF West Africa in Accra, Ghana, a Dutch training and consultancy agency in management and social entrepreneurship in WASH with a focus on francophone West Africa. During this time she continued to work for GWA.

Since March 2017 she is working as Deputy Director for GWA, based in the Secretariat in Dieren, the Netherlands