Melissa Herrmann has a passion for children-at-risk and social justice. She graduated from Vanguard University with a Bachelors of Science in Sociology. She has been working with orphans, street children, child soldiers, and child prostitutes since 2000 in a variety of settings and countries.
Melissa founded and directed a children’s home in Tanzania, Africa. The home-based model provided excellence in care and raised the standard for orphan care in that district. She used that set of skills to do consulting and training with numerous other orphanage and children’s home directors as well as international social workers.
Her vast experience in working with at risk children led her to assist with policy work in Rwanda, working directly with government leaders for nationalized orphan care policy reform, as well as program development for sex workers, former child soldiers, and child-headed families. Her work was in collaboration with organizations such as UN, USAID, and World Vision.
Melissa is currently working as the Program Director/Executive Director for Courage Worldwide, a non-profit organization that builds homes for minor girls rescued out of sex trafficking. Her passion is to see policy reform as well as to build residential programs that provides excellence in services to minor victims of sex trafficking.
Her combined experience has given her a broad set of skills ranging from developing an administrative foundation for an organization to staff training, social work, program development, and organizational networking. Melissa has lived in Africa for 10 years and has had extensive international experience, working in the following countries: United States, Mozambique, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Thailand, Brazil, and Mexico.