Fellows

Abida has four years of experience in the nonprofit sector, and earned a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Peshawar in Pakistan. She has diverse work experience as a program support personnel in planning, monitoring, evaluation, research, reporting, and knowledge management. Abida has worked with host communities, internally dislocated people as well as with refugees, in development and emergency contexts. While working as a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer with the Sarhad Rural Support Program, she helped in providing social mobilization support to the Community Driven Local Development policy of the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, under the funding of the EU. Abida has also helped in providing opportunities to the rural women of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in their homes, through the provision of skill development and microfinance trainings, under the AUSAID-funded livelihood strengthening project. Previously, Abida worked as a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Reporting Officer with the Danish Refugee Council in Pakistan to support sustainable solutions for Afghan refugees living in different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, by creating livelihoods and improving general living conditions. Through these experiences, she has acquired strong monitoring and evaluations skills, which are applicable across different areas. Abida enjoys focusing on the topics of women empowerment, economic development, promotion of Civil Society Organizations and rural development.

Host Organization:  Empowered Women International

 Role at Host Organization: As EWI relies heavily on monitoring and evaluation of our program impacts for use in fundraising and communications with potential clients and donors, Abida will be helping shape the continued improvements to Monitoring & Evaluation by both assessing and updating the current systems, and researching & implementing a new Customer Relationship Management system by late 2016.

Chilochibi Chiziba is a Research, Monitoring and Evaluation (RM&E) enthusiast, Bachelor of Arts Economics with Demography (minor) holder from the University of Zambia. He has worked in RM&E related positions for about 4 years in different organizations including Jhpiego, Concern Worldwide, and the United Nations Economic commission for Africa. While working for these organization, He worked on projects focused on, socioeconomic development, gender based violence, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, maternal and Child Health. Immediately after graduating in 2015, he earned an internship with the United Nations Economic commission for Africa where his work involved supporting the Sub-regional Office for Southern Africa in carrying out policy research, analytical studies and advocacy to promote economic and social development. After completing the six months internship, he joined Concern Worldwide where he supported routine monitoring, impact evaluation and overall learning component of projects to facilitate implementation, performance assessment, identifying appropriate actions for strengthening performance of humanitarian responses and development approaches. From 2016, Chilochibi has been supporting the Zambia Ministry of health in areas including HIV/AIDS, malaria, cervical cancer, reproductive, maternal and child health through data systems and research while working at Akros and Jhpiego. In his capacity, he provided technical capacity building in DHIS2/HMIS data use and analysis at all Ministry of Health levels, including provincial, district, and facility levels and led the design, development and implementation of provincial monitoring, evaluation and research systems. This included the development of RM&E plans; implementation of data management and data use systems.

Host Organization: Solstice

Role at Solstice: Chiliochibi will join a team at Solstice working with two Department of Energy awards to implement a new alternative credit metric, increase energy equity, and grow the solar pie – and stand up some of the first low-income community solar projects in the country.

Cosmos Elorm Godson has five years of work experience in the nonprofit sector and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Corporate Finance from Université Mohammed V, Morocco. As a humanitarian worker, he helped New Forest Green to bring education to the youth, skill development for women, gender equality activism and domestic violence prevention in the deprived communities in the Eastern Region of Ghana. He currently works with Strategy Africa as Project Coordinator where he coordinates educational programs for brilliant but needy students and deals with human rights issues. In the past, Cosmos volunteered to teach in a public Senior High School in the Upper West Region of Ghana to help bridge the educational gap between the Northern (where there is acute lack of qualified teachers) and Southern Ghana. As a Rotarian, Cosmos has volunteered and served on many charitable projects of the club. Some of these projects include Rotary Family Health Day. Just to mention a few, this project brings health screening, immunization and distribution of drugs to the deprived communities in Accra; Walk for Polio Eradication, which creates awareness and raises funds to eradicate polio globally; career guidance training in schools; donation of books and learning materials for schools. Additionally, Cosmos contributes to Strategy Africa’s quest to bringing education and human right’s advocacy to marginalized children. Throughout his several volunteering experiences, he gained strong project management and fundraising skills. Cosmos is strongly interested and passionate about learning and achieving goals in youth empowerment and humanitarian microfinance.

Host Organization: Heartland Alliance International

 Role at Host Organization: Cosmos will support the operational aspects of HAI, including but not limited to: subaward, human resources, budget, and finance management and provide translation or interpretation as needed. He will provide back-end support to ensure quality operations that are on par or better than international standards and best practices.

Hajira has four years of experience in the nonprofit sector and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Kinnaird College, Pakistan. She worked as a marketer, recruiter, and fundraiser for nonprofits from around the world by applying her knowledge of management and starting an action group in 2010. Due to her strong communication skills, she was able to establish affiliations with international organizations like British Council and Peace Child International. Her four years of work experience taught her management and interpersonal skills, created in her a passion for campaigning, and showed her how progressive organizations can be by creating new partnerships. For a year, she served on the Steering Committee of a youth-led advocacy campaign ILMPOSSIBLE which is working on making sure that Pakistan’s government’s promise of free and compulsory education is implemented. Hajira is one of the few female delegates who represented Pakistan at various international events like the 5th World Youth Congress, Commonwealth Young Professionals’ Forum, and 4th United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. Last year she spoke of her experiences as a volunteer and the importance of volunteerism at TEDxKinnaird. Due to her determination to help achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals she has been recognized by organizations like the British Council that awarded her the National Active Citizen Award 2010, and the U.S. Department of State that granted her Study of the United States Institutes Scholarship on Women’s Leadership, 2011.

Host Organization: Meridian International Center

Role at Host Organization: Hajira will join Meridian International’s Global Connect division focusing specifically on international exchange for leadership development. She’ll leverage her skills and experience to support the development of service learning criteria and programming.

Ishaq has over five years of experience in the nonprofit sector, and earned two Master’s of Science degrees in Project Management and Applied Statistics from the University of Management and Technology in Pakistan. He earned a Rector’s Award for scoring four out of four GPA during his MS in Applied Statistics. He earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Statistics from Government College University in Lahore, Pakistan with a Gold Medal for securing first position in the class. While working as a Monitoring and Evaluation Analyst with Chemonics International Inc. in Pakistan under the USAID-funded Punjab Enabling Environment Project for more than two years, he worked to measure the impact of policy interventions made for the economic growth in the Agribusiness sector of Punjab. Ishaq has also worked with USAID funded Pakistan Firms Project implemented by Chemonics International Inc. as Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for more than two years that focused on accelerating sales and creating jobs in the targeted value chains of Agriculture and Industry sectors. Through these experiences, he developed strong monitoring and evaluation, project management and data analysis skills. Ishaq enjoys focusing on the areas of economic growth, women empowerment and gender equality, and has a strong passion for human and institutional capacity development initiatives.

Host Organization: SEED SPOT

Role at Host Organization: Ishaq will help design, collect, and track SEED SPOT measuring and evaluation work enabling more accurate and up to date data. Working with High Schools and SEED SPOT Communities across the country, he will help develop new modules and curriculum for Schools and Communities programs.

Julie has six years of work experience in the nonprofit sector. She earned a Master’s of Science degree in Project Management from the University of Bolton, and a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Economics and Public Administration from the University of Zambia. Julie has worked as Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Officer for Pact Zambia in Ndola since November 2016. She supported the Zambia Community HIV Prevention project (Z-CHPP) focusing on community HIV prevention. Julie’s main role was ensuring a functional monitoring and evaluation system to catalyze innovative sustainable, accessible and quality health solutions. She supported Implementing Partners to ensure that data was collected from health service delivery points, analyzed and reported, conduct data quality audits, identify success stories for organizational learning, and participated in all research work. From March
2016 to October 2016, Julie worked as a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer in Lusaka, Zambia for Society for Family Health (Population Services International). Her project portfolio included; Sexual Reproductive Health Initiative for all, Department of Defense, Expanding Effective Contraceptive Options and HIV self-testing. From February, 2012 to March, 2016 Julie worked for World Vision Zambia as Monitoring and Evaluation Officer in Eastern province. She contributed to World Vision Zambia’s mission to work for the poor and oppressed through the implementation of area development programs aimed at enhancing transformational development by reducing poverty and empowering communities. At World Vision, Julie’s project portfolio included Health, HIV/AIDS, Sponsorship, Water and Sanitation, Education, Food Security and Livelihood. Julie has assisted programs with planning, managing information
systems, reviewing performance against targets, identifying and addressing implementation challenges, documenting lessons learned and most significant success stories, report periodically and, oversee research activities, program assessments and designs. Julie has acquired skills in activity scheduling and tracking, design and implementation of project monitoring and evaluation plans and, conducting both qualitative and quantitative research.
Julie is interested in development programming, research and policy formulation and implementation to improve development outcomes. She enjoys traveling, site seeing, meeting different people from all walks of life and dancing.

Host Organization: Save the Children

Role at Host Organization: Julie will work with the HIV & TB technical team to support the technical aspects of program implementation. She will assist with program oversight, operations, logistics, and monitoring and evaluation functions and will also support the technical and M&E teams in reviewing program documents/reports and ensuring their timely submission to the relevant quarters. She will also contribute to the development of new proposals, program innovations, knowledge products and various other technical tools and processes.

Margaret is a 33 years old Zambian female citizen born in Kitwe, Zambia. She has 11 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. 3 years of volunteerism and 8 years different positions of full time contracts. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Development Studies from Zambian Open University, Post-graduate Diploma in Monitoring and Evaluation from Cavendish University-Zambia and Diploma in Social Work both from University of Zambia. Margaret works as a Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning officer for the USAID funded Zambia Community HIV Prevention Project (Z-CHPP)/DREAMS Initiative based in Choma, Southern Province of Zambia. She supports the organization in ensuring a functional monitoring and evaluation systems. Her main responsibilities are; to ensure data is collected from service delivery points, analyzed and reported according to organizational and donor requirements, data quality audits, identifying success stories for organizational learning. From August 2014 to November 2016 she worked for Women and Law in Southern Africa – Zambia as Monitoring and Evaluation Officer in Lusaka province. She contributed to Women and Law in Southern Zambia’s mission to contribute to socio-economic, political and legal advancement for women. Achieved through a collaborative, strategic action oriented research in the social and legal field; lobbying for legal reform and policy, changes on laws and practices which discriminate and disadvantage women and children. Her responsibilities were to assist programs with planning, manage programs information systems, conduct reviews of performance against targets, identifying and addressing implementation challenges, documenting lessons learned and most-significant success stories lastly oversee the entire organisational Monitoring and Evaluation system and participate in baseline studies. Margaret has acquired skills in activity scheduling and tracking, design and implementation of project monitoring and evaluation plans and Reproductive and Sexual health. Margaret is passionate about women and children’s rights, Gender, HIV/AIDS and Disability issues.

Host Organization: RestoreNYC

Role at Host Organization: Working as an Impact Manager, Margaret will lead Restore’s team in its outcomes model and tracking across client services, housing, and economic empowerment programs. She will refine Restore’s impact infrastructure including manuals and processes, ensure effective implementation of impact activities, and analyze data and communicate results of findings to diverse stakeholders.

Maryem has 5 years of experience in the development sector and earned a master’s degree in business administration from Bahria University in Islamabad, Pakistan. Maryem’s association with the development sector has been diverse both in terms of thematic and functional areas. While working as a program officer in USAID’s Small Grants and Ambassador Fund Program, she provided assistance to the grassroots level organization in designing initiatives in education, health, economic development, entrepreneurship, disaster, women’s issues, culture, and the environment. As the regional manager at a consultancy firm, she helped with research and monitoring and evaluation. She also carried out institutional assessments and conducted capacity building exercises for DFID, EU, World Bank, UNDP, UNICEF and USAID funded projects. Through these experiences, she developed strong project coordination and implementation skills. Maryem enjoys focusing on the topics of economic empowerment and social entrepreneurship and has a strong passion for women’s empowerment.

Host Organization: Global Communities

Role at Host Organization: Maryem will provide support to Global Communities’ economic development portfolio with a particular focus on entrepreneurship, enterprise development including cooperative development, access to finance, workforce development and private sector partnerships. She will develop specific technical products and tools, including programming frameworks/models for business advisory services and workforce development; cooperative enterprise development tools; and research briefs.