Fellows

Abid is a mobilization, monitoring and evaluation professional, with five years of experience in the humanitarian and development sector of Pakistan. He holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur Sindh. Currently, he is working with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization as a Social Mobilization (Team Lead) and District Focal Person in the Human Security Project, funded by UNTFHS. He is engaged in field operations, implementation, and as a liaison to the government and other stakeholders. He helped more than 2000 male and female farmers gain access to their social rights and maintain good relations with their landowners by signing tenancy agreements, along with economic development through on-farm and off-farm activities. His tenure helped develop his leadership, project management, rapport building and monitoring and evaluation skills. Beyond his skills and professionalism, he is very interested in youth empowerment through education and social entrepreneurship activities. He has voluntarily organized many sessions at schools in his vicinity to raise awareness for future opportunities for youth in education and development sector. Abid is an adventurous person, who loves to explore famous places, cultures, meet different people and learn new languages.

Host Organization: Creative Associates International

Role at Host Organization: Abid will be supporting the Business Intelligence Function with research and analysis of the international development market to help inform strategic decisions. He will be conducting research on Creative’s competitors, partners, clients, and news sites to analyze where the market is and Creative’s advantages and potential opportunities.

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.

Duygu Guven Soyer has ten years of experience in the nonprofit sector. Throughout her career, she has gained experience in different fields of nonprofit activities, such as disadvantaged youth and youth participation; regional environmental issues; rural development and poverty reduction; and, capacity building for local nonprofit organizations. Such experience equipped her with various skills and competencies such as project design and management, reporting, monitoring and evaluation at different levels as well as supervision of fieldwork. In 2001-2005, Duygu volunteered for the Youth Association for Habitat and Agenda 21 with the Implementation of Local Agenda 21 project, working on management of volunteers, relations with public institutions and fundraising. In 2005-2007, she worked professionally for an international organization, Regional Environmental Center, as an Executive Assistant, responsible for reporting, developing projects and evaluating activities. Between 2007 and 2010, Duygu worked for the Sustainable Rural and Urban Development Association (SURKAL), where she was in charge of fundraising, monitoring-evaluation and reporting activities. She has also taken responsibility for the program design of rural development projects, capacity building of local nonprofit organizations, and socio-economic research in rural areas.

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Host Organization: HasNa

George is a development aficionado with eight years’ experience in the nonprofit sector and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Cell Biology and Genetics from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. He possesses exceptional knowledge in project formulation, data management, and research assignments in various donor-funded health and education projects including those of the World Bank, USAID, and Global Fund. While working as a Programme Officer (Health and Education) with the International Institute for Local Development under the Literacy in Education project, he worked in collaboration with USAID’s Northern Education Initiative Plus (NEI+) to improve the literacy skills in public primary school pupils in focus states in Nigeria. Previously, George worked as an ENR (Enhancing Nigeria’s Response to HIV/AIDS) consultant with the Society for Family Health, where he helped improve institutional and resource capacity of both government and community actors and scaled up access to services and commodities related to health matters especially Malaria, Cervical Cancer, and HIV & AIDS. George believes in community volunteerism, which led him to join the Nigerian Red Cross Society as a Service Group Member. Through these experiences, he developed strong Monitoring and Evaluation skills in both education and health interventions. In addition to his multilingual skills in English, Igbo, and basic French, he is also very passionate about socioeconomic development strengthening and also fostering positive and sustainable change in his country and the world as a whole.

Host Organization: Sheltering Arms

Role at Sheltering Arms At Sheltering Arms, George will collect, compile and analyze programmatic data with a lens toward outcome study, development and implementation. He will work closely with the programs, quality improvement, and development teams and with senior leadership to identify and develop outcome measures to be utilized in designated programs.

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.

In 2008, she helped the implementation of community banks in São Paulo, which are microfinance institutions run by grassroots organizations in order to improve local development. In 2010, Mara studied political science at the University of Santiago the Compostela in Spain for one semester, and when she returned to Brazil she joined the Institute for the Development of Social Investment (IDIS) as an intern supporting formulation of fundraising strategies and trainings for nonprofits. In AIESEC in Brazil, she was part of the national executive board supporting program development and managing national partnerships, while in Egypt she joined Youth Initiatives Team at UN Women focusing in supporting university student’s engagement. Her last assignment was as an Edge Growth Business Associate working for one of the top incubation center’s in India, CIIE (Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, which fosters innovation-driven entrepreneurship. There she was a member of the ecosystem development team and has helped organize the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) India and developed knowledge management processes for the organization. As an engaged activist and through many volunteer and work experiences, she developed strong project management skills, which she hopes to use to improve women’s rights, youth empowerment and fight poverty in global scale.

Host Organization: Young Professionals in Foreign Policy (YPFP)

Role at Host Organization: Mara will work at the heart of the initiatives, programs, and activities most critical to YPFP’s success – fostering the next generation of foreign policy leaders by providing young professionals with the knowledge, skills, exposure, and relationships they need to tackle critical global challenges over the course of their careers.

Nesrine has two years of experience in the nonprofit sector. She earned a Master Degree in Business Management in Marketing from the Mediterranean School of Business in Tunisia. She has worked as a Monitoring & Evaluation Coordinator since January 2017 at the USAID-funded Business Reform & Competitiveness project (BRCP): a job creation project in Tunisia through a targeted technical and HR assistance for small and medium enterprises with the aim to increase their competitiveness. She worked closely with BRCP’s different components elaborating work plans, setting objectives jointly with the team and stakeholders. She also monitors on a regular basis the advancement and achievements of the project in accordance with the project goals – based on key performance indicators. She also reports the results to the project management, Home Office, and USAID. During recent years, she has been involved in the world of entrepreneurship and she took part in several different conferences in order to acquire more understanding in entrepreneurship. She also participated in an entrepreneurship based-program for empowering entrepreneurial minds in the emerging world. During this program, she had collaborated with other participants to create a participatory online platform to enable better communication between citizens and municipalities as well as between citizens themselves.

Host Organization: PYXERA Global

Role at Host Organization: Nesrine will help with the public and communications department in planning the Fall 2018 Global Engagement Forum, corporate sponsorship, and marketing material. She will also contribute her entrepreneurial experience to other events and strategic priorities.

Olumide has over 10 years of experience working on Communications, Environment Sustainability, Climate Change, Agro-ecology, Monitoring & Evaluation, and Sustainable Development issues. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Statistics from the University of Abuja in 2010. Olumide is a communication and digital expert and trainer with extensive experience in creating, facilitating and managing projects. He has represented Nigeria and Africa at over 25 high-level global governance and environment meetings on sustainable development and has served as the African Youth Champion for UNISDR. He was selected as a facilitator for UNISDR in Japan 2014 and Mexico 2017 for his strong interest in Youth and Disaster Risk Reduction, as well as serving as an Expert of the Week by UN environment and UNISDR. Olumide is the recipient of the 2015 Save the Children Award of Contribution toward Sustainable Development in Nigeria and Commonwealth Youth Climate Fellow. Olumide has co-founded two organizations: the Nigerian Youth Climate Coalition, the biggest youth environmental movement in Nigeria, and the International Climate Change Development Initiative, which identifies key environment-based issues affecting development across Africa. Olumide currently works as the Youth Lead Author for Global Environmental Outlook of the UN Environment and was selected by the US Embassy in Nigeria for International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP), where he spent almost 3 weeks in the United State learning about Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation.

Host Org: Creating IT Futures

Fellow role at Creating IT Futures: Olumide will serve as a Social Media and Student Recruitment Fellow where he will manage social networks to increase audience engagement and strengthen the reputation as a thought-leader in the STEM and tech workforce development markets.