Dr. Sudhanshu Joshi is the Executive Director of the International Center and Coordinator of the Global Advocacy of the Global March Against Child Labor and sits in the Washington, D.C., office. He represents the movement, which is vibrant in hundred countries and represents some 2000 organizations worldwide. Dr. Joshi is a member of the Global Task Force on Child Labor and Education and one of the key architects working on the establishment of GTF systematically in the last five years. Dr. Joshi has been working in the last twenty years extensively with the Governments, NGO’s, networks and coalitions in South Asia, Central Asia, South Eastern Europe, South and Central America that are focusing on livelihoods, micro-credit, education, child labor forced labor, trafficking and poverty intersect. Since 2004 he launched the first ever Round Table on Education, Poverty and Child Labor intersect within the EFA-High level Group meetings that has played a critical role in bringing the issue of child labor as major impediment to Education For All. He subsequently organized the Round Tables in Brazil, China and India together with the Ministries of Education, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, ILO and The World Bank. His major work now focuses on education from the perspective of hardest to reach children and creating pre-conditions for them to attend full time schools; child labor in supply chains within CAFTA and trafficking.
Prior to this Dr. Joshi has been the Principal Advisor to NOVIB-OXFAM Netherlands, a strategic development finacing organization for ten years. In this capacity he had the ability to serve India and Nepal. Dr. Joshi is an alternate Board Member of the Global Campaign for Education on behalf of the Global March. For the last ten years Dr. Joshi has also been on the Executive Board of the British charity Partnership for Development Organizations (PDO), which works exclusively in the Central Asian countries with offices in Tashkent and Bishkek.
Dr. Joshi's essential work domain remains the U.S. where he has been the first in bringing an authentic southern perspective on poverty, child labor, forced labor, trafficking and education intersect through organizing a series of Congressional testimonies. Dr. Joshi is a Permanent US Resident and lives with his family in Rockville, Maryland.
Beth Lindley joined ICCLE in 2003 where she works to build deeper understanding of global child labor, education and poverty linkages and to integrate a child labor dimension into national education plans and poverty reduction strategies. Ms. Lindley has spent considerable time in South Asia and South America to understand these issues and to develop profiles of and education programs for the hardest to reach children out of school, including child laborers, girls under the age of 14, etc., as well as effective models for the protection of child victims of trafficking. In this regards, she has a close working relationship with civil society organizations, senior government officials and the ILO.
She has country experience in Columbia, Ecuador and Perú, India, Pakistan, Yemen and 5 other gulf states. Prior to joining ICCLE, Ms. Lindley worked with Free the Slaves on a UN Anti-Trafficking Toolkit, and with RUGMARK. She received a Masters
in International Development from American University’s School of
International Service (July 2001), where she wrote the thesis: "The South
Asian Hand-knotted Carpet Industry and Illegal Child Labor." She received a
Bachelor of Music from Indiana University (May 1991), and taught music for
six years in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. She grew up
in Kenya, Malaysia, the United States and Italy.
Youth Editorial Board, Youth Network for
Children's Rights
Alok Vajpeyi is a senior manager, researcher and consultant with over several years’ experience in consulting, start-up, research, government and non-profit environments creating value at the intersection of people, organization and development.
Alok is a Management Consultant by profession and Child Rights Activist at heart. He holds a couple of academic and professional degrees, including an M.B.A from the Maastricht School of Management, Netherlands and has been active in the development sector for over 15 years. He has worked with Novib-Oxfam, Netherlands and Global March against Child Labour in the past.
Alok has the experience in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programmes and strategies, especially in the areas of education, ICTs in education, child rights and governance - with an emphasis on civil society engagement/partnership in a rights-based and gender aware context. Alok has considerable experience in introducing and upgrading knowledge management and results-oriented quality management systems in organizations.
Alok was member of the ICCLE team involved to carry out research in India and Bangladesh on inter-linkages of child labor elimination, education for all and poverty alleviation in 2006.
Working for the children, who are deprived and need as much love, care and opportunities to learn, play and grow as our own children, energizes and gives Alok a sense of immense satisfaction and responsibilities in life. He wants to bring that satisfaction and smile in the life of each and every child in the world.
Kiran Kumar Pant Country Coordinator, Nepal
Mr. Pant is in management consulting field since nine years. He has developed child development manual for Nepal Rug Mark Foundation-Kathmandu. He has worked as external monitoring consultant of NOVIB-Oxfam Netherlands for its partner NGOs in Nepal & India. He is external monitoring consultant also for Agro Enterprise Center-Nepal in its agriculture policy advocacy program reflecting on children in agriculture. He has Master in Development Management in 1993 from Asian Institute of Management, Makati, Manila, The Philippines; MBA in 1983 from Faculty of Management Studies- Delhi University, Delhi, India. He speaks Nepali, English, Hindi and Bengali
South America Team
A María Claudia Orjuela Laverde Country Coordinator, Colombia
María-Claudia was born in Bogota, Colombia, where she resides currently.
After studying Social Communication at the undergraduate level, she obtained
a master’s degree in Education Policy from Harvard Graduate School of
Education, focusing on the education needs of vulnerable children and the
use of communication for educational purposes. María-Claudia worked at the
Science and Technology Museum of Colombia (MALOKA), designing TV- and
Internet-based teacher training projects. After graduating from Harvard
University, she worked with the Education Development Center in Washington
DC, designing distance education projects using Interactive Radio
Instruction methodology. In that context, she worked on projects in India,
Guyana, Honduras and Colombia. Since returning to Colombia in 2004, she has
worked on projects with the Ministry of Education and various international
organizations, designing teacher training programs focusing on the needs of
displaced children. She has also been coordinating Projects of students in
a High School in Bogota linking curriculum to social development issues.
