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| Specialist Advisors |
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Shoaib Sultan Khan
Specialist Advisor
Mr Khan has also been closely associated
with policy making and development
planning in Pakistan and is currently
serving as honorary Chairman, Board of
Directors of the Rural Support
Programmes Network (RSPN), National
Rural Support Programme (NRSP), Ghazi
Brotha Development Organization (GBTI),
Sindh Rural Support Organisation (SRSO)
and Director of the Aga Khan Rural
Support Programme (AKRSP), Sarhad Rural
Support Programme (SRSP), Punjab Rural
Support Programme (PRSP) and Balochistan
Rural Support Programme (BRSP). Mr Khan
also served as Member, Steering
Committee Sweden-based Global Water
Partnership, Director of the Nepal-based
International Centre for Integrated
Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Member of
the Advisory Group of the World Bank
sponsored Community Development Carbon
Fund, Member of the Government of
Pakistan Advisory Committee on
Millennium Development Goals and
Chairman of the Pakistan Government’s
Vision 2030 Group on Just Society.
Currently, he is Honorary Adviser to
Planning Commission and Chairman of the
Special Committee on Poverty Reduction,
Social Protection and Women Empowerment,
set up by the Planning Commission.
Mr Khan began is career as a lecturer
and later joined the Civil Services of
Pakistan in 1955. In December 1982, Mr
Khan initiated the Aga Khan Rural
Support Programme (AKRSP) in the
Northern Areas and Chitral (NAC)
district of Pakistan. The World Bank
carried out two evaluations of AKRSP
during 12 years of Mr Khan’s
helmsmanship of AKRSP and concluded that
in a span of 10 years the income of the
NAC households in real terms had more
than doubled.
At the behest of United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), Mr Khan as
Senior Adviser, South Asia Poverty
Alleviation Programme (SAPAP) undertook
to set up, between August 1994 and March
2005, demonstration pilots on the
pattern of AKRSP in Bangladesh, India,
the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka and
replication of AKRSP in Pakistan.
In recognition of his work at AKRSP, Mr
Khan was awarded the United Nations
Environment Programme Global 500 Award
in 1989; Sitara-e-Imtiaz by the
President of Pakistan in 1990; the
Magsaysay Award by the President of
Philippines in 1992; the World
Conservation Medal by the Duke of
Edinburgh in 1994; the Rotary
International (Pakistan) awarded Man of
the Year 2005 Gold Medal in 2006;
Sitara-i-Eisaar for earthquake work; and
Hilal-i-Imtiaz on Pakistan Day in 2006
by the President of Pakistan. |
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T. Vijay Kumar
Specialist Advisor
Mr. T. Vijay Kumar his 25 years of
service in Andhra Pradesh as an India
Administrative Services (IAS) officer,
Mr Kumar has spent more than 19 years in
rural development, especially in tribal
areas. He has served as Managing
Director of Girijan Cooperative
Corporation, a tribal multipurpose
cooperative, between 1990 and 1995. In
this assignment he handled the marketing
of more than 40 different forest and
agricultural products. Between 1995 and
1996, he was posted as District
Collector, Vizianagaram, where he
promoted women self-help thrift and
credit groups in large numbers, with the
help of existing women’s groups and
youth groups. As Commissioner, School
Education ( 1998-2000), he handled the
issue of child labour eradication
through social mobilisation in
partnership with M.V. Foundation, an
eminent NGO.
Since 2002, Mr Kumar has worked with the
Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty
(SERP) as the Chief Executive Officer.
He has been involved in implementing two
large rural poverty reduction projects
financed by the World Bank: the Andhra
Pradesh District Poverty Initiatives
Project and the Andhra Pradesh Rural
Poverty Reduction Project. These two
projects, with a budget of over Rs 2,000
crore, today cover more than 90 percent
of the rural poor in the state. The
objective of these projects is poverty
eradication through social mobilisation
and empowerment of the rural poor. The
programmes, covering 96,00,000 women
organised into 8,10,000 SHGs, are the
largest programmes for comprehensive
poverty eradication in the country. The
unique feature is the proactive and
critical role played by the women, their
SHGs and the federations of SHGs in all
key interventions, right from planning
to implementation to monitoring. A new
paradigm of poor people’s ownership of
the development process has been
introduced through this programme. |
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B. Vijaya Bharathi
Specialist Advisor
Ms Bharathi has over 25 years’
experience in social mobilisation, group
formation, organisation-building from
self help groups to people’s
associations, sub-district and district
level federations, capacity building in
leadership for women’s movements. She is
a specialist in social analysis of
poverty and human life line episodes,
and human responses to social change in
social mobilisation practices, training
and capacity building for poor
communities and specifically socially
neglected and discriminated poorer
groups of the society as well as
planning action for social development,
and gender and entrepreneur development.
Her experience includes design and use
of communication tools of culture, art,
music, dance and social practices of
oratory and presentation skills,
demonstration, documentation and
presentation of capacities of
organisational building, team building
and mentoring, monitoring and
implementation management of community
development project activities.
She is currently a Consultant to the
World Bank, Sri Lanka, on training to
Community Resource Persons. She has
served as a Consultant to the United
Nations development Programme (UNDP),
Sudan to evaluate poverty eradication
programmes in Sudan, as Project Officer,
Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty
(SERP) in Kurnool district for media and
advocacy campaign on women’s empowerment
and child labour; as honorary member of
State Women’s Commission, Andhra
Pradesh, Kurnool District Committee on
Female Infanticide and Foeticide, and
Kurnool Red Cross Society; as Project
Officer, SERP (UNDP) in Kurnool
district; as Consultant to India
Institute of Health Family Welfare; and
as Project Officer, District Rural
Development Agency, Nellore district.
Special achievements include one of the
leaders in mobilising 10,00,000 rural
women against liquor and for mobilising
10 million women around self help groups
in Andhra Pradesh; and the UNDP Race
Against Poverty Award to the community
where she worked for 10 years as a
Project Director.
Ms Bharathi has several publications on
development to her credit as well as the
production and directions of several
development films. |
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