About Us | Grace International

What We Do

GRACE is an international charity based in the U.K. that promotes long-term, sustainable reconciliation and advocacy for children born of war, their families and communities affected by war.

We provide grants to projects, charities and other organisations working to reduce hardship and stigmatization of children born of war, children born in captivity and their families.

We aim to protect and advance their physical and mental wellbeing, education, social inclusion, economic empowerment and human rights.

Our origins are in a series of award-winning collaborations between academics, filmmakers, local and international NGOs and individuals who themselves were born into war-affected communities that have already changed lives and attitudes in Bosnia and Uganda.

GRACE Team

Our Trustees

Trustee

Professor Sabine Lee

Sabine Lee is Professor of Modern History at the University of Birmingham. She is a specialist in the social consequences of armed conflict, and has published extensively on conflict-related sexual violence, children born of war (CBOW) and on unintended consequences of UN peacekeeping. Sabine has extensive experience in leading international partnerships and large collaborative projects. Her monograph Children Born of War in the 20th Century won the 2019 proxime accessit Social History Book Prize (UK).

Trustee

Dheeraj Akolkar

Dheeraj Akolkar is an award-winning director and producer, and the founder of Vardo Films with experience of 15 years in making international fiction and non-fiction films. His work has received acclaim all over the world. Dheeraj started working with stories of children born of war in 2007 and has made three films on that subject so far. In 2021, Dheeraj teamed up with an Oscar-nominated production company, Sant og Usant, producer Anita Rehoff Larsen and activist Gerd Fleischer on one of his most ambitious films to date, titled The Other Side of Silence. This film focuses on stories of children born of conflict-related sexual violence in seven war zones: Germany, Bosnia, Uganda, Vietnam, Columbia, Iraq and Ukraine. The film is currently in production.

Trustee

Dr Rachel Canty

Rachel Canty has more than 15 years’ leadership and management experience in Higher Education. For the past 8 years, she has been Head of Operations in a large Higher Education unit with responsibility for strategy, governance, compliance, financial and HR processes, and managing administration and delivery of externally-funded activities, including a variety of international research projects. In previous senior management roles, she also was responsible for the management of quality assurance processes, including external partnerships and collaborative agreements.

Trustee

Dr Karen Houghton

Karen Houghton has had a varied career, with professional experience in online publishing and US federal contracting, in addition to a short stint as an academic lecturer. For most of the past decade, Dr. Houghton has worked in academic research development, supporting researchers to secure research grants from UK, EU and international funders, and in research management, particularly to develop impact and engagement from their research, including partnership-building with stakeholders in a variety of sectors. She has held a variety of strategic planning roles and is an experienced people manager.

Trustee

Dr Toni Smith

Toni Smith is a Research Fellow in History at the University of Birmingham. Her doctoral research focused on colonial histories of slavery and sexual and gender-based violence in Belgian Congo during the early twentieth century. Currently, she conducts research for the Peacekeeper Perpetrated Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Project, analysing training programmes aimed at peacekeepers on topics of gender and the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA). She has several years of research and impact-related experience.

Trustee

Andy Canty

Andy Canty is the Director of Technology Services at Focused Education Resources Society, a not-for-profit organization supporting and strengthening K-12 education in BC, Canada. With over 25 years’ experience in technology leadership, Andy has focused his career on public education delivering safe and responsive technology solutions to empower students and educators. He has a wealth of knowledge and practical expertise in data governance, cyber security, platform integration, and cost-effective technical solutions. Andy is currently researching the potentials and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence and related emerging technologies within the education sector.

Trustee

Lejla Damon

Lejla Damon is a child born out of the war that occurred in Bosnia in 1992. She was adopted by two British journalists, who brought her back to the UK. She was 19 when she began her activism and has worked with different governmental and non-governmental organisations (UK's Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, War Child, Forgotten Children of War Association) to highlight the issues around sexual violence that women and their children face. She currently lives in Manchester and works as a Shopper Marketing & Kids Brand Manager for a fast-moving consumer goods company in the UK. She has a degree in Advertising BA (Hons) and a masters in Business Administration (MBA). She regularly goes back to Bosnia, as after 23 years she made a connection with her birth mother (a survivor), and they started on a journey of building a relationship together.

Our Associates

Associate

Professor Heide Glaesmer

Heide Glaesmer is a psychologist and psychotherapist (Cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy) by training. She is the deputy head of the Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology at the University of Leipzig/Germany, where she is heading the Psychotraumatology and Migration Research Lab.

She is a specialist in the psychological consequences of traumatic experiences, especially in conflict related sexual violence, in trauma in the context of war and forced displacement, and in Children Born of War. Her scientific work is reflected in more than 300 scientific publications and has recently been awarded with the Ralf-Dahrendorf-Award for the European Research Area.