As a young girl, Suzanne Wilson was always appalled at seeing children being bullied or teased by their peers on the playground.Those early experiences instilled in her a lifelong passion and dedication for speaking up for those suffering injustices and abuse.Now age 47, Ms Wilson was recently named executive director of Amnesty International Bermuda. She has been charged with creating opportunities through education and communication.She told The Royal Gazette: “My natural inclination, even at school, was to champion people who were either deprived or victimised. However, it never crossed my mind that I would become a part of an organisation such as Amnesty International Bermuda.“In watching my own three boys grow I recognised that people respond very well if they understand what is going on around them.“It is this desire to create awareness and a belief in education that has led me to be the executive director of Amnesty International Bermuda.”Amnesty is a worldwide movement of people who are committed to freedom and justice. The organisation has more than three million members and supporters in more than 150 countries.Amnesty coordinates this support on a wide range of issues, including rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression and freedom from discrimination.Mrs Wilson said the organisation didn’t get involved in specific or individual cases in Bermuda. “If there was a specific case that gave us concern we would refer it to our international colleagues,” she explained.“However, it is very important that we do support principals and movements in society. We work together and our supporters can be involved regardless of their age, race, background, skills or in fact where they live.”She said the local organisation’s role was “to support and work within the Amnesty mandate that includes equal rights for the [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community, migrant workers and vulnerable groups and demand dignity for people in poverty all over the world and to have their rights respected and their voices heard”.Mrs Wilson spent her adult years working in a variety of fields from international business to hospitality and communications.The mother-of-three was recently invited to join the Amnesty Bermuda board and took on the role of executive director this past August.She said growing up she had always known about Amnesty International’s work and considered it “common sense” to support its causes. “I just knew it was the right attitude to have, in terms of how to treat people and behave,” she explained.That, coupled with her interest in travel, helped prepare her for the new role.She said that one of the challenges as executive director is dealing with the public demand for immediate results, which is not always possible.While there have been great strides over the years to amend the Human Rights Act to ban discrimination, there is still a way to go.“There is a group of committed and dedicated people who continue to pursue the amendments. We just have to have the staying power and collectively demand that the change has to be made.“We have so many other issues that we can be working on, but we just have to tackle them one at a time, cohesively as a community, to get the results.”Amnesty International Bermuda works alongside such organisations as the Rainbow Alliance, Centre for Justice and the Women’s Resource Centre.Throughout the remainder of the year, they are encouraging the public to take part in a postcard and letter writing campaign aimed at getting views on human rights violations heard around the world. Residents are invited to write on an issue they care about and drop their message off at the Bermuda Book Store in Hamilton.Amnesty International Bermuda has also recently launched a partnership with Warwick Academy to become the first Human Rights Friendly School on the Island. Warwick Academy will join a network of 21 schools around the globe to take part in the three-year pilot programme, developed within the context of the United Nations World Programme for Human Rights Education.Françoise Wolffe, who is co-ordinating the programme for Amnesty International Bermuda, said: “The originality of this programme is that it offers a whole-school approach to human rights education.“Four main areas of the school life are considered when promoting human rights principles within a school: governance, curriculum, relationships and school environment. This goes beyond just the teaching of a human rights lesson in the classroom. It empowers students to recognise abuses when they are confronted with them and it encourages them to become agents of change in their community”.It is hoped Warwick Academy will serve as a model for other interested schools in Bermuda.Mrs Wilson said Amnesty International’s fight for human rights for all was something that could be embraced by people young and old. But she said: “We don’t do it to be out there in the neon lights, we do it because it’s the right thing to do.”