Board

The board represents the legal body of UNOY Peacebuilders. Its members are all based in The Netherlands and its function is to approve overall plans and budgets, overview financial administration, in consultation with the International Steering Group and the International Secretariat.

Board Members

Jennifer Aggus – Chair of the Board

In addition to serving as Co-chair to the Board of UNOY Peacebuilders, Jennifer is currently working with MSF Holland as Association Coordinator. Her previous professional experience has been with Mama Cash, International Organisation for Migration and AIDS Foundation East West in the Netherlands, and The Immigrant Women’s Centre in Canada. Jennifer’s professional focus has centred on social justice and grassroots community development, and her professional and academic concentration has been in humanitarian issues, political engagement, gender studies and migration & ethnic studies. She is the past Chair of the Status of Women Committee for the City of Hamilton, as well as past President of the Facilitating Inclusion Cooperative.

Jennifer holds an MSc in Development Sociology from the University of Amsterdam and an Honours BA in International Development Studies from Queen’s University in Canada. Her personal interests and hobbies include literature, film & photography, music, cooking, hiking & climbing and yoga.

Lieke Scheewe – Secretary

I’m 25, Dutch, and work as Program Coordinator with LIGHT FOR THE WORLD The Netherlands, an NGO that supports partner organizations in Africa and Asia for the eradication of avoidable blindness and inclusion of people with disabilities in development. I’m supporting our partners in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and one of the things I enjoy the most is when I can make connections or strengthen networks that are useful for partners in expanding or improving the impact of their work – something I hope we are doing with UNOY as a network also. Before starting this work I completed an MA in Conflict Studies & Human Rights (Utrecht University, The Netherlands, 2009) and the MA Peace Education (University for Peace, Costa Rica, 2010) and was involved with several Dutch NGOs as a volunteer over the years.

Valari van Tusschenbroek – Treasurer

Hello everyone! I am Valari and I am the treasurer of the board of UNOY. As a treasurer, I am responsible for the financial monitoring and control of International secretary. The treasurer is also involved in the large financial transactions, grant management topics, income of fund raising activities and the annual accounts.

A brief overview of my work experience:

Finance officer at CARE Nederland (2010- currently holding this position)

CARE is one of the world largest aid agencies, fighting poverty and injustice in over 70 countries around the world and helping 55 million people each year to find routes out of poverty. As a finance officer, I am responsible for the day to day financial grant management of large development projects (500K-10 million). Besides the support that I offer at the HQ level, I also monitor and train our field-offices in Somalia, Sudan, DRC, Burundi and Liberia.

Analyst at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) from 2005 till 2010

PricewaterhouseCoopers is one of the big four audit firms in the Netherlands. At PwC, I have worked on different areas of expertise; from audits on EC subsidies and Dutch healthcare organizations, evaluation studies for the European Commission, to due diligence work, just to name a few. My work consisted of performing detailed analyses of a business, external audits and advisory work. I have worked for Dutch and international clients in the Netherlands and abroad.

Rob Watson

For the past 26 years Mr. Watson has worked in the fields of conflict management and human rights, as a trainer, manager and consultant. After working with human rights groups in South Africa for eleven years, in 1995 he relocated to Den Haag and established Frontier Consulting to undertake consultancies as an expert with governments, donors, international agencies and NGOs in, Africa, Asia and Europe.

For two years he worked as Regional Peacebuilding Advisor at CRS in Indonesia and other countries in South East Asia. Since July 2003 Mr. Watson has worked as an Expert Consultant with the EU, UNDP, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and various Dutch institutions. In 2006 he worked for a year in Finland during the EU Presidency as Director of the Conflict Prevention and Crisis Management programme for the Crisis Management Initiative. He teaches Conflict Analysis for Prevention and Peacebuilding at the UN Staff College in Turino, Italy.