Alex has been living in the Philippines for the past 13 years. His passion and commitment for development work characterized his stay in this country. Started working for an Italian NGO in1997, he left the Philippines in 1999 for a short stint in Rwanda.

He came back to the Philippines to work again for an Italian government supported project that eventually led to the creation of a Filipino non-govermental organization. Since the end of 2004 he has collaborated with the World Health Organization Philippines, and contributed to the crafting of a strategy that aims at improving the lives of urban poor communitiesand at the same time at the improvement of infant and young child feeding practices in the country.

In 2009, Alex joined UNICEF Philippines as a consultant , and worked with WHO and UNICEF to contribute to the efforts of expanding the Reaching the Urban poor strategy implementation. He has been working hand in hand with communities, health care providers, legislators, leaders and local chief executives as well as with NGOs (local and international) on different issues, like maternity protection, regulations, community development and empowerment, developing tools and systems.

He has learned a lot from the Philippines and the Filipino people.

Chris is an advocate of progressive social development work believing that nation-building is achievable through volunteering. Right after his college degree in BS Business Management at Xavier University –Ateneo de Cagayan, he worked as a JVP (Jesuit Volunteer Philippines) as a professional teacher in Bulan, Sorosogon. After a year, he tried exploring a career in a multinational pharmaceutical company before he eventually end up working at Loyola Schools Ateneo de Manila University as a program and organization development specialist, and resource trainer on leadership formation and development. For 8 years he worked in Ateneo together with college student leaders and serving as mentor/coach in mounting OD interventions to various student organizations. At that time, he took his Masters in Industrial Organization Psychology at the University of the Philippines – Diliman. Throughout those years, Chris has been sharing his expertise in Organization Development, Performance Management, Communications (Branding) and Human Resource Training.  

In 2008, Chris was accepted as an international volunteer with VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas is based in London, United Kingdom) wherein he was assigned in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (East Africa) to a local NGO as a Monitoring, Evaluation and Communications Management Adviser. He also worked as Programme Funding Researcher for VSO Tanzania Country Office specifically on the HIV/AIDS Programme Area Plan. Both of his placements in Tanzania evolves around the HIV/AIDS sector and deals with People Living with HIV (PLHIV).

Catherine is assigned as UNV Health and Policy Planning Specialist with the World Health Organization. Native from France, she has been involved in the health sector for more than 12 years working for both public and private sectors.

After completed her master's degrees in business and administration and in health economics, she started working for Quintiles, a consulting firm, handling several health care systems analysis and designing pharmaco-economics studies. After 2 years she joined NOVARTIS Pharma, a Swiss international pharmaceutical company and spent 9 years in different positions, dealing with strategy and policy, price and reimbursement and project management.

Her passion for development brought her to a 2 year assignment in Vietnam as Country Manager for ESTHER a franco-vietnamese project on HIV/AIDS care and treatment. She planned, organized and monitored the implementation of the project in Hanoi, Haiphong and Ho Chi Minh City; supported Vietnamese and French teams of 10 hospitals involved and secured the coordination of the project with international and local stakeholders in Vietnam. Since then, she has been working for the French Bank of Development (AFD) as Health Project Manager, assisting several African and Middle-Eastern countries in designing and financing their projects in the sector. She was also leading a working group and studies on the role of the private health sector in development.

Catherine is enthusiastic about being back in Asia and having this great opportunity to learn and share her skills and experience through volunteerism.