Selvi Vikan

Area of Expertise:

• Agriculture, Livelihoods, Microfinance, Rural
• Capacity Building, Training, Advocacy
• Disaster, Aid, Emergencies, Relief
• Government, Governance, Reforms
• Social, Education, Gender, Youth, Child

Professional Experience:

Over the 15+ years, I have established a strong track record in designing and managing programmes in social protection, community driven development, social inclusion, gender and emergencies. Further, I am goal-driven and results-oriented, have high standards of integrity and accountability and thrive on energising teams to deliver results.

In social protection, I work closely with the Government of Malawi in harmonising their social support policy. I have successfully led a multi-stakeholder task force consisting of government, UN and bilateral agencies in the development and drafting of the new national social support programme. This has involved facilitating, mediating and coordinating different interests in social support in Malawi whilst working with the government to keep their priorities at the forefront. I also lead the process of operationalising the strategy and am working with the government to develop a national implementation plan.

In addition to this, I manage GIZ’s support to the government’s implementation of social protection in the country. I manage a team of 6 members in the district to support capacity development of district government staff to implement social protection programmes in communities. This has involved strengthening accountability procedures and technical competence at district offices and supporting a bottom-up community driven development approach which empowers communities to identify local challenges, solutions and priorities for development.

I have a solid track record on social inclusion, voice and participation. In Nepal, I successfully established a legal aid centre in Kathmandu to enable the marginalised Dalit population to bring forward cases on caste and gender based discrimination. In addition, I managed a joint UN programme in Laos on basic education that enabled ethnic minorities to overcome access barriers and participate in quality education in addition to managing an innovative pilot programme to tackle high levels of malnutrition amongst ethnic minorities. I also carried out 5 national gender assessments for the World Food Programme in southern Africa and was awarded additional funding by DFID to implement recommendations to improve gender responsive programming in the organisation and the region.

With respect to emergencies, I have over 8 years of experience establishing social safeguards for displaced populations affected by conflict, natural disaster and government policies. For the Norwegian Refugee Council, I led participatory processes with displaced populations in Africa and East Asia on socio-economic assessments and livelihood support in order to promote their economic and social development in the resettled area; held consultations with host communities to address increased demands placed on them and minimise tension towards the resettled group; and successfully established grievance redress mechanisms to address adverse effects of development assistance.