Staff

Miranda Reilly, Co-Director for Membership and Operations

Miranda Reilly is the Co-Director for Membership and Operations, jointly leading and working with the team to set and meet AVID’s strategic aims. Miranda joined AVID in April 2022 and is responsible for ensuring it’s financial and organisational capacity to build communities in solidarity with people who have been detained. 

Miranda has more than ten years’ experience of working in the charity sector with a focus on local organisations that support young people and vulnerable adults. Prior to joining AVID, Miranda was Director of Strategic Partnerships at Drive Forward Foundation, working with young adults who have grown up in the UK care system to support them into employment. Miranda has worked with and continues to volunteer with a number of migrant community groups in London and Kent. Her commitment to migrant solidarity is motivated by this work and witnessing the punitive nature of our immigration system and its impact on those who must navigate it.

Gee Manoharan, Co-Director for Policy and Influencing

Gee is the Co-Director for Policy and Influencing, jointly leading and working with the team to set and meet AVID’s strategic aims. Gee is responsible for influencing policy reforms, making the human case for ending detention, galvanising public awareness, and amplifying the transformative work of AVID's network.

He has a strong background in voluntary sector development and community-based approaches, gained both in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland. He was a founding member of the Larne House Visitors Group which supports those detained in Larne, outside Belfast. Having experienced the harsh realities of detention firsthand in Colnbrook IRC and Larne House STHF, Gee emerged as a survivor with an unwavering determination to make a difference. Following his release, he became a visitor to people held in detention. In his role, he brings a full spectrum of experiences as a survivor of detention, and also the experience of visiting.  

Fiona Ranford, Network Development Officer

Fiona is our Network Development Officer at AVID, with responsibility for supporting and strengthening our network of visitor groups to immigration detention across the UK.

Fiona joined AVID in September 2020. She has worked as a trainer and educator within social movements and voluntary organisations for over 10 years supporting people to advocate and organise for social justice from the global to the local level, from struggles against environmental injustice to housing rights and religious discrimination. Her work has frequently focussed on building relationships of solidarity across differences of power, identity, belief and experience. Alongside her role at AVID she is carrying out research into approaches to transformative political education in the UK and volunteers locally with a migrant solidarity group.

Aminata Kalokoh, Member Development Coordinator

Aminata is the Member Development Co-ordinator at AVID with a responsibility for supporting groups who are new to, or in the process of establishing, visiting support to places of detention.

I am a very sociable, collaborative, responsible and reliable individual. I have a logical mind with a pragmatic approach to solving problems and a determination to see things through to a positive conclusion. I have several years of work experience leading across different sectors. Over the years, I have dedicated my time to various research and community-based initiatives in the fight against social injustices. As someone with a critical mindset, enriched with my lived experiences of detention in Yarl's wood IRC, I have been active in advocating against the use detention. My take on this issue is that borders were created by humans as a power tool to discriminate and enforce control over the weak.

I am a member of an international research group on Community Psychology and Migrant Justice, which is composed of scholars, practitioners, and people with lived experience of migration and border control. In the past two years, the group has been actively involved in promoting critical awareness on migration-related issues amongst psychologists in Europe and North America, by promoting seminars, workshops, and creative sessions.

Prior to working with AVID, I have been collaborating in the project “Exposing the Gendered Violence of the Detention Regime” to which we are currently developing a short, animated video.

With AVID, I will be looking to work closely with all stakeholders in effecting the change that we all need in breaking borders and decolonising the system of immigration that we currently have. 

Sui Lau, Alla, Communication Coordinator

Alla is the Communication Co-ordinator at AVID, responsible for facilitating internal communication with our member groups and external communication with the wider audience in the UK.

Originally from Hong Kong, she was experienced in academic research, campaigning, politics, and community work. With her MPhil degree in Sociology, she has spent years working extensively with marginalized groups, from migrant workers, asylum seekers, people living with HIV, LGBTQ+ communities, female sexual assault survivors, to people with mental illness, advocating for their welfare and equal rights as well as campaigning for social justice and systematic changes.