Host Organization: IDE
First Year Placement
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Erin Mercado is a global sustainability researcher interested in working within the intersection of environmental justice and health equity. The start of her interdisciplinary career began during her time as a Healthy Schools Coordinator for Peace Corps Guatemala experiencing the dissonance and failure of health programs that did not integrate social determinants of health like the environment and socio-cultural factors. This inspired Erin to pursue a masters of environmental management at Western Colorado University. As a graduate student she was fortunate to work with SARAR, a water and sanitation (WASH) nonprofit in Mexico, to train communities about the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus and with Creating Interfaces, an international FEW nexus research team, to study food policies in Delaware through the Global Sustainability Scholar program. Erin’s masters project was an exploratory research into menstrual health and hygiene (MHH) in rural Ethiopia in collaboration with iDE, specifically their WASH and Ethiopia teams. She has continued to work with iDE as a consultant to build out their global MHH portfolio. While eager to operate and learn more about the nuances of food and nutrition from the implementation to policy level, Erin is particularly excited to serve new communities and elevate food and nutrition as a channel to connection, care, culture and a link to the land.