Smoothly graduated (108/110) in Peace and Conflict Studies at Florence University in late 2005, immediately hits the road - leaving for Kosovo, where he will spend a year working with an Italian NGO, "Operation Dove", learning the basics of Direct Protection and Applied Reconciliation in the South-West of Kosovo, where a fragile calm covers a frozen reality where the two ethnic groups do never meet. After a year of work in Italy, advocating for a better recognition of Peacebuilding and Civilian Peacekeeping work by the Italian authorities, he will be back in February 2008, in time to see Kosovo become independent from the vantage point of Mitrovica, northern city split by the ethnic fault line. He works then for another Italian NGO, "Association for Peace", again dealing with crossing the conflict boundaries, this time bringing together the kids from the two halves of the divided city.

By May 2008 he is in Sri Lanka, working for Nonviolent Peaceforce as International Protection Officer - first with a focus on IDPs, then on Human Rights Defenders. He will spend two years between the minority populated east of the island, and the capital Colombo, witnessing the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers and the descent of the country into a regime of repression of dissent - providing direct protection first to displaced communities affected by the conflict between the different armed factions and then to outstanding journalists and HR lawyers trying to make the case for those same communities.

NP operates as a flexible protection tool who often lends is services to other international agencies or diplomatic representatives in need of providing unarmed hard-core security to victims of conflict.

I'm a lawyer with law degree graduated in University of Colombo Faculty of Law. I joined to the Ministry of Constitutional affairs and National Integration in 2005 as a Research Assistant. Representing the government I participated the peace building course in Hiroshima peace builders centre funded by the Ministry of Foriegn affairs of Japan last November 2009. After completing the one and half month course work in Japan, I rejoined to my ministry. Since I came here I worked in my ministry giving my contribution to its ongoing programmes.I'm a resource person for the awareness programmes conducted my ministry to make aware the government officials and school children on the Constitutional litteracy. I have the experiences of inter cultural exchange programmes with IDPs in my country. As the second part of my peace building course in Japan I joined to the WFP Philippine as Monitoring and Reporting Officer.

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.