Born in London, Charlotte attended Queen’s College before doing her A Levels at Malborough College in Wiltshire. In 1981, Charlotte went to Durham University to study Politics, Anthropology and Russian Studies where she began to develop a passion for international development and communications.
International Development and Communications Career
Fresh out of university, Charlotte left for New Delhi, India to work as a Research Associate for the Centre for Development and Instructional Technology, writing articles about the role of women in development. She travelled alone visiting many women’s development projects in India, Nepal and Bangladesh before going on to work at Mother Theresa’s Home for the Dying and Destitute in Kolkata.
From 1987-91, Charlotte researched for a Masters in Communications for Development with Durham University. Working with Action Aid Nepal, this involved setting up a solar panel communications unit in the Himalayas and producing a number of media on beekeeping as a source of income and additional nourishment for women and their families in rural Nepal.
In order to fund her thesis research, Charlotte worked for North South Productions UK making documentaries for international NGO’s. Starting off as a Researcher, she quickly rose to Associate Producer and by the time she left 6 years later she was Assistant Director. Working in media and development led to many adventures around the world including climbing Mount Kenya, seeing the magnificent Western Ghats in India, swimming with piranhas in the Amazon, filming the Shandur Polo Festival in Chitral Pakistan, and, more traumatically, being shipwrecked off the east coast of Africa.
Amidst a growing recognition of the importance of women’s wellbeing in international development, Charlotte’s work with women in South Asia, including training women on beekeeping as a livelihood in Nepal for her MA, led her to co-founding Learning For Life in 1989, an international girl’s education charity. Starting in Pakistan and India, Learning For Life has now spread throughout South Asia, providing the infrastructure needed to ensure girls get a full education.
While living and working in the Diocese of Kimberly and Kuruman, South Africa in 2008 for the Bishop of Oxford’s Overseas Programme, she discovered the work of Children’s Radio Foundation and was asked by the charity to set up a UK registered charity branch launched in 2011, of which she was President until December 2017.
Church Career
In 2004, Charlotte graduated from North Thames Ministerial Training College, London and was ordained as a Priest in the Diocese of Oxford, where she did her Curacy and became an Associate Priest at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. Her passion for interfaith relations and outreach led her to found the annual inter-faith "Friendship Walk" in the same year which has since become a popular Oxford event. The walk was the catalyst for the formation of the Oxford Council of Faiths, of which she was a member 2008-2013, which aims to promote good relations and respect between people of different faith communities in Oxford.
In 2008, Charlotte, her husband and four boys went to live in Kimberley, South Africa where Charlotte oversaw the diocesan link between Oxford and the Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman. Working closely with Bishop Oswald Swartz and the Dean of Kimberley Cathedral, she supported the development of several K&K projects (HIV/AIDS, peer education centre, orphanage, women’s shelter and Cathedral school) and continued for the next four years to support and fundraise for the Link projects when back in the UK.
Charlotte has since been Associate Priest at the Church of St Michael and All Angels in Summertown and Catechist at Exeter College, Oxford. However, her base is at the University Church where, in 2017, she became the first female Priest-in-Charge in the history of the church. She was until the end of 2018, Director of Outreach and Interim City Rector. She is now Associate Chaplain to the Bishop of Oxford.
Charlotte’s hobbies include reading, walking, spending holidays in Maine with her family and making sea art. She is married to Bill Bannister-Parker and has 4 sons, 2 pugs and a cat.
