Florence Aruko is an avid advocate for pleasure, agency, and youth empowerment. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Stellenbosch and an Honours degree in Development Studies from the University of Cape Town. Her research interests are aimed towards the empowerment and upliftment of young black women in East Africa through restructuring the Sexual Education Curriculum by focalizing Pleasure, Agency & Choice. She hopes to disrupt damage discourses that reinforce gendered patriarchal and heteronormative hierarchies that aid inequalities and oppressive structures. Particularly how discourses around pleasure, agency and empowerment can be transformative vehicles of change across Africa.

She has immersed herself in various leadership roles within the residence sphere as part of the House Committee, Executive Committee and as Strategic Advisor on Inclusion and Transformation. She has undertaken and co-created leadership courses on Citizenship, Decolonization, Community Research and Facilitation. She is a member of the Golden Key Society, has worked as a Research Assistant on Local Governance in South Africa and is currently an Undergraduate Sociology Tutor.

Florence’s hobbies include reading African literature and literature on pleasure and sexuality, leisurely sunny walks surrounded by nature, hiking with friends, cappuccino dates with friends and family and the occasional musical. She envisions a future where the sexuality of African women is empowered, valued, and respected. A future in which the sexualities of young women are not objectified, shamed and engaged in patriarchal respectabilities. A future that recognises and advocates for beauty, happiness and the right to pleasure for all.