5 minutes with a Hunger Project investor and supporter – Suzanne Dibble

Jan 17, 2020 | Latest News

Suzanne Dibble is an investor and supporter of The Hunger Project and our Unleashed Women movement in the UK. We spoke with Suzanne about what connects her to our work and some of the highlights of her journey so far with The Hunger Project.

Suzanne is an entrepreneur, the UK’s leading GDPR expert and an award-winning lawyer. Her book GDPR for Dummies is out now.

I first found out about The Hunger Project through my friends, Nicola Bird and Joanna Martin, both committed supporters of the organisation. What really attracted me to The Hunger Project’s work was its focus on empowering women, and helping women to be able to believe that they could “do it for themselves”. This was not hand-outs, but the realisation that women are key to cultural change and empowering them with the tools and knowledge to bring about that change and the end of hunger. This is a huge aim for an organisation to have, but one that I believe is achievable.

I’m a woman, with two daughters, and feel incredibly lucky that my parents were able to invest in my education to help me become a lawyer. I’m also grateful that I was born into a family where there was no distinction between boys and girls, no inequality. I feel so privileged. I know that this is only the case for maybe 10% of women in the world and I’m a big believer in justice and trying to readdress that balance.

In my professional life I have always worked with women in my business mentoring, trying to address the inequality that exists even in this country. I have been lucky to be able to continue my career, have children and structure my work around them.

I work to help women set up their own businesses. I want to help them to have the same opportunities whilst having a family that men do. A lot of the women I’ve worked with have suffered from inequality growing up, and this has affected their mindset and their willingness to take risk and invest in themselves. My work is to help readdress that balance and give them the confidence to achieve their goals.

Some of the highlights of my journey supporting The Hunger Project include the food challenges I’ve taken part in to fundraise for the organisation’s work. I took on the Live Below the Line Challenge which challenges you to live on £5 for 5 days for all food and drink. I’m a foodie, food is one of my passions and this challenge really brought home to me how difficult life is when choice and nutrients are so restricted. The endless meals of plain porridge, rice and lentil soup were so monotonous, and I felt really miserable during that week. I believe there is so much value in challenges like these because they remind us that many people around the world experience food poverty, and I realised how truly lucky I am to be able to eat in nice restaurants or buy the food that I want. I’d certainly recommend doing a food challenge like Live Below the Line. Our experience is never going to be exactly the same as that of someone who actually does live in food poverty but the challenge has a really important message to teach us.

Another of my experiences with The Hunger Project was the Bake Off Challenge at the launch of the Unleashed Women movement. It was a great, fun, competitive event where female entrepreneurs faced each other in various baking challenges. I even won the cream whipping challenge! It was a great way for women to come together, network and meet each other in support of the women that The Hunger Project works with.

It is these women that The Hunger Project supports and my experiences that inspired me to invest in the organisation and their work ending hunger. My dream would be to fund a legal clinic where people could go to get support: to stop property disputes, to understand their rights and to help women and children.

A huge Hunger Project thank you to Suzanne for her continued support and partnership in the end of hunger. If you would like speak to us about becoming part of the community to end hunger and poverty, please get in touch with our Country Director, Sophie Noonan. Sophie.noonan@thp.org

Read more interviews with our supporters here:

Mary Waring

Dr Joanna Martin

Nicola Bird

Chrissy Merton

Teresa Boughey