Why merl?

Capturing community memories of the Kenmure Street Protest against Home Office dawn-raids to create a public-owned memory book.

I set up merl in 2022 to help organisations, movements and campaigns achieve their social justice missions through monitoring, evaluation, research and learning.

When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being an ‘expat’ and working for an organisation like Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). This dream became a reality and I spent many years living and working across Africa, the MENA region, and Southern Asia.

When I started my career, I wasn’t conscious of the white privilege that enabled me to fulfil my ambitions. My experiences educated me about colonialism, geopolitics, and racism — about why I had the freedom to live and work anywhere in the world but others couldn’t.

On my return to the UK, my work for ActionAid, educated me in a human rights-based approach — that people living through injustice are much better placed to understand and respond to their own situations. I became an expert in collaborative inquiry, reflection action, and facilitating discussions. I built up a wealth of experience and knowledge to support organisations seeking to achieve systemic social transformation — from understanding how change happens to managing programmes, fundraising and evidencing results and reporting.

merl stands for monitoring, evaluation, research and learning – the building blocks of our expertise.

merl is also the Scots name for a blackbird. Blackbird is also my favourite Beatles song — written by Paul McCartney in support of the civil rights struggle in America in the 1960s. He wrote the song as a message: “Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.” This sentiment perfectly aligns with merl’s strong anti-racist, feminist values that seek to decolonialise monitoring, evaluation and learning practices to amplify the voices of the people at the centre of the struggle.