Meet a new A2i-member: Vibeke Munk Petersen, Team Leader in the Sierra Leone – Denmark Houses and Community Partnership Program.
“Our goal is together with our partnership organizations in Sierra Leone to provide 2,000 new homes, The homes must be affordable, safe, and sustainable. Also, our project must include a job creation module, where focus is on using local successful entrepreneurs to create local jobs – to ensure long-term economic stability, so people will be able to pay a rent, send their children to school, be more aware of their tights, and get tools on how to change their situation. So, the sustainability is defined both in terms of the construction and effect on the community” tells Vibeke Munk Petersen. She is team leader in the Sierra Leone – Denmark Houses and Community Partnership Program, one of the newer members of Access2innovation.
In Sierra Leone about 70 percent of the population is under 35 years. Around 80 percent of them live in poor houses without safe tenancy. So, improving the housing situation is a challenge that demands innovation. Therefore, a group of professionals at ARKITEKTURVÆRKSTEDET has made a project proposal – and is now looking for investors.
“We became members of Access2innovation to get inspiration for an investment plan for the project. With this project where we are trying to raise the necessary investment based on a request from people from Sierra Leone where many people in especially the major cities live in slum areas. I have been working in Sierra Leone, which is listed as one of the poorest countries in the world and have seen how relatively minor things can make a difference and change people’s lives positively. The project will be using a community driven development approach, which treats communities, institutions, and partners as assets by empowering them not only socially but also economically. Community-driven development programs are inclusive development practices that are designed to facilitate bottom-up collective actions or local partnerships to support the implementation of demand-driven sub-projects. These programs are designed to operate on the principles of local empowerment, inclusiveness, demand, responsiveness, openness/ transparency, greater downward accountability, and enhanced local partnerships.”
The Sierra Leone project is working in a partnership cooperation with the Centre of Dialogue on Human Settlement and Poverty Alleviation (CODOHSAPA) and with the Federation of Urban and Rural Poor (FEDURP). They are both from Sierra Leone, and both are affiliated alliances of Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI) Network which is a transnational social movement of the urban and rural poor, and NGO professionals. The Danish/Sierra Leonen group is also cooperating with the Western Rural District, which is the local government of the area, and now looking for land to build on,
More than 20 years of experience from more than 30 countries
Vibeke has a MSc in International Development and History and has more than 20 years of experience with program management and consulting. She has been team leader on numerous assignments within human rights, gender, youth and entrepreneurship, product design and development of business initiatives and community-driven development in developing countries. She has solid experience in monitoring and evaluation and has carried out numerous evaluations on local and national governance, appraisals, and implementations. She has worked with institutional governance and NGO related assessments in a broad spectrum of sectors in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Eastern and Central Europe.
In Denmark, Vibeke is working as – among other – program director in PEN Afghanistan’s international office in Copenhagen. PEN International promotes literature and freedom of expression by protecting, sheltering, and resettling writers at risk globally. It is a non-political organisation which holds Special Consultative Status at the UN and Associate Status at UNESCO.
Vibeke is also program manager in the SEEN Group (Social Entrepreneurship & Education Network) Furthermore, she is an associate consultant in PEM Consult, who advises bilateral and multilateral institutions including the European Commission, UN agencies, international and regional development banks, as well as NGO’s and private sector clients, etc.
Contact Vibeke Munk Petersen here:
+45 40 40 65 87 , vibekemunkp@gmail.com vmp@pem.dk
