Born: 1976, United Kingdom
Died: NA
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
The following was written by Amanda Fernandez for iFeminist and is republished with permission.
Born in 1976 and raised in Comrie, Perthshire, Emma Revie has always cherished the value of charitable endeavors with the majority of her career spent under organizations tackling poverty. While little is known about Revie’s upbringing, she currently lives in Streatham, South London with her husband, Norman, and their sons, Seth and Noah. She received her secondary education in Crieff High School, located in Scotland. Her post-secondary education was at Strathclyde University (1993-1998) in Glasgow earning a Bachelors in German, Spanish and European studies. Her career began with IBM, a computer hardware retailer, as a customer satisfaction manager from 1998-2000.
Despite her success, she would immediately move on to more charitable efforts, the first being the Tearfund: an organization that allowed her to work directly with people ages 14-25 in conjunction with the Skills Funding Agency and the Young People’s Learning Agency to provide apprenticeships in entrepreneurship and customer service. The goal was to work with local schools to get high school students back on track for completing their educational requirements and provide employment across the UK, primarily in London. Her most successful endeavor was her leadership for youth charity Ambition, commencing her work in September of 2016 to January of 2018. The aim of the Ambition project was to expand upon the work established in the Tearfund in addition to tackling the housing crisis in London, especially among youth, offering a support package that includes job training, employment, and manageable living conditions.
The organization became so successful that, in fact, a merger between Ambition and UK Youth was made to expand services across the country given an increased demand, due to the faulty welfare policy employed by the government. In spite of the work done under Ambition, Revie was offered a job as the Chief Executive of the Trussell Trust to continue expanding her role across London now as an advocate for food inequality and homelessness.
She happily accepted, succeeding David McAuley in 2018. Revie’s involvement in the Trussell Trust stems from her personal experience as a mother of two young boys explaining to The Guardian, “I know that when they are hungry – and I mean between meals – it becomes something that they are fixated on. To experience hunger over a long period of time, the fear of not knowing where your food is going to come from, I think is all-pervasive for kids.” She has found her situation mirrored on other women like Lisa, a single mother with an autistic son, or Eleanora, an unemployed worker struggling with diabetes, unqualified for welfare or housing assistance.
Women like these have been astounded by the impact of food donations now dedicating their own free time to spread these services they have benefitted from. Pre-COVID, Revie and several volunteers would distribute an average of 600,000 emergency food parcels, however, these trying times have increased this number to 1.3 million, most of which are personally delivered to people’s doorsteps.
This drastic increase in numbers comes from a cut on welfare which Revie says is as a result of embarrassing governance only making a few dents in a widespread issue of health, eviction, hunger, and debt issues. Today, Revie continues her work under the fund, expanding its reach under partnerships with supermarket giant Asda to fund its food stock and pay higher wages to its workers. Her goal is not to expand services, she points out there are “so many paradoxes in this job” signifying her hopes that people will no longer need an emergency food fund if the government creates systemic change. Ironically, anytime she experiences a decrease in need for emergency food it creates a sense of hope for her and the Trussell Trust to abolish the premise “it just is,” replacing it with “we can help.”