Claire Bennett
M.A. History, University of Cambridge
Claire is a great believer in the transformative power of educational travel, and has been leading trips for Dragons since 2010. She has lived and worked in Cambodia and India, and currently resides in Nepal, and is at her best when helping others experience the magic of these countries. Passionate about the power of education to change the world, Claire has led many of the programs aimed at educators, enabling them to bring global education into the classroom. She has also run custom programs with schools and the first ever Dragons adult program!
Claire fell in love with Asia as a teenager, volunteering in remote Nepal and helping to found a rural development organization, PHASE. She later moved to Cambodia, where she lived peacefully for a few years in the north east along the banks of the Mekong, volunteering with amazing grassroots organization CRDT.
In her native UK, Claire spent 5 years working in development education, training teachers and supporting educational institutions and universities to develop curricula. She facilitated a global youth work project, Global Youth Action, working with disadvantaged youth, and coordinated a regional strategy for the UK government about how to embed a global dimension in schools.
She now works freelance for projects involved in development, education and responsible volunteering. As well as working with her beloved Dragons, she is a freelance consultant working in the fields of development, anti-trafficking and advocacy around international volunteer travel. Alongside fellow-Dragons instructor Daniela Papi-Thornton, in 2018 she published a book called “Learning Service: The Essential Guide to Volunteering Abroad” which was hailed by Noam Chomsky as “an essential contribution…a manifesto for doing good well.”
Passionate about global equality and social justice, these values drives everything that she does. Claire is an incurable optimist and has boundless energy – mainly fueled by caffeine from her British tea-drinking habit.