A former part-time professor at a Canadian community college has left the classroom behind for a front-line career fighting for the rights of children and their families.

Donna Outerbridge returned to Bermuda earlier this year as the new director of client services for the Coalition for the Protection of Children after a decade in Canada. Dr Outerbridge, who has a PhD in the sociology of education, was inspired to apply for the post after she saw a video of the charity’s work online. The Coalition aims to heighten public awareness of children’s issues and advocate on behalf of them and their families, and to provide services which address critical needs to ensure that all children grow up in a safe and nurturing environment.

“I felt, OK, here’s a population that I would like to work with, being a single parent and having gone through my own particular struggles and knowing that there’s light at the end of the tunnel,” the Pembroke resident explained.

“It was an opportunity to come home and give back to my community and to be able to empower women, in particular single-parent women and just women in general, but women that I felt that I could identify with.”

Dr Outerbridge said she had long had a passion for helping people and her background has always been in social services.

“Even when I was at university, I would come back for the summer and work with Family Services,” she said.

“Underneath that I would work with Residential Treatment Services in various capacities, from residential care officer to case manager or acting social worker.”

Dr Outerbridge, who also worked at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital as an intern medical social worker, meets with clients in crisis and assesses how best she can use the charity’s resources and connections to help them.

“I get a background of the women so I can better assist them, to help empower them, to move from the position that they are in right now into a position of having independence, financial security and job security,” she explained.

“I used to work at Addiction Services when they used to be on Court Street and that’s where my initial interest in wanting to help, wanting to understand how people end up in crisis, and understanding that there are circumstances that led them there, came from.”

She said that while her own struggles led to her interest in social work, being a single mother doing secretarial work left her feeling like she wanted to do more.

Although she had taken classes at Bermuda College and started a law programme, the former administrative assistant moved to Toronto with her nine-year-old son, Gabriel DeVent, to study sociology at York University in 2002.

The move was a big step, but Dr Outerbridge said that her son gave her all the confidence she needed because she knew she had to be strong for him.

“I had to know, or learn, how to survive out there in order for him to be OK,” she added.

Dr Outerbridge obtained her bachelor’s degree in 2006 and completed her master’s degree in sociology of education at the University of Toronto in 2007.

While studying for her PhD in the same subject at the University of Toronto, Dr Outerbridge also worked part-time as a professor at the Centennial College. She taught five classes a week while she was writing her dissertation on The Social and Historical Construction of Black Bermudian Identities: Implications for Education.

Dr Outerbridge completed her PhD in 2013, but said she always planned to return to Bermuda to work in social services.

“That was my passion, that was my niche, and I felt that that’s where I can be of better service and I needed to go through the process myself, and when I say process I mean go through the academic process, in order to be able to come back,” she said.

“It means a lot to me because I feel that my struggle was not just for myself, it was a means of understanding how better I can be able to assist.”

Dr Outerbridge said she also wanted to work in this field because Bermuda was going through an economic, social and political crisis, and she wanted to help bring about positive change.

• For more information on the Coalition for the Protection of Children visit www.coalition.bm

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