Dee Kraaij has a BSc in Psychology and Sociology from City University, London,  and a postgraduate diploma in Applied Social Science/CQSW in Community Work from Swansea University. She worked for fifteen years as a Community Development Worker in London and in Suffolk, England, and also holds a TEFL Certificate and an NVQ Training Unit.

This experience, and a long-term interest in how personal and communal development can best be facilitated led to work with the charity ADAPT training and managing a drug rehabilitation team in a large training prison in the UK.

In 2005, Dee began work as a volunteer with VSO in Papua New Guinea. Using her Community and Personal Development experience, she studied the relationship between schools and communities in the Highlands. She carried out a unique survey, designed around a student-centred set of exercises in Kerowagi Secondary School, on Attitudes to Education among students, teachers, and community members. The survey showed up the need for change in attitudes to and expectations of education, to encourage life-long learning and diverse thinking skills to help development truly in tune with the needs of Nationals. In effect, what needs to be asked is: what would you not be willing to give up, even if there were a law made, forbidding it? What would you defend to the last against the Orwellian thought-police?!