Angie Lizbeth

My identity has always been split in two. I am Indigenous Peruvian, but I grew up in Italy. My family escaped poverty and the grim, harsh violence of Latin American streets, but we also became immigrants just a few miles away from the growing far right in Italy.

In 2018, when I joined WAES, I was working as an au pair in London, having found in this city, being different was normal. For the first time in my life, I was simply one of many. How restful life can be when you are the norm.

Being different had defeated me as a child, and made formal education feel like a setting for people who did not look like me. Literally so, in Italy. It was rather revolutionary when, having signed up to WAES to ‘improve my English’, I was suddenly brought back into it.

WAES was revolutionary. I hadn’t known that learning was feasible for me. That I was made for learning. I will be forever thankful to my tutor, Eleanor Kliffen, who placed unconditional trust in me – and all of my classmates. During my studies, Eleanor nominated me for a Learner Award. For the ceremony, I listened, speechless, to the stories of so many hardworking students who were rebuilding their lives and achieving so much through WAES.

After finishing my GCSEs at WAES, I completed an Access Course and then went on to become a marketing apprentice at the Tate museums. It was rather magical to be working at the same place Eleanor had taken us for a class trip! And I still have to pinch myself every now and then, when I look back to this July, to my graduation with a 2:1 in Social Anthropology and Politics at the University of Cambridge.

While pursuing competitive applications, my life continues to feel split, as I volunteer for The3Million and the Social Anthropological Institute, using my marketing skills for the latter and my political science skills for the former!

The one thing in which I am finally whole is an identity I had lost through the sociopolitical challenges of being an immigrant: I am a learner. WAES has given me the tools and confidence to call myself one.

To see more about Angie’s story, you can follow her on LinkedIn here.