About Us: Our Team

Kundhavi Balachandran

Senior Programme Officer, East and Southeast Asia

Languages Spoken: English, Tamil and Sinhalese and is learning Japanese

Kundhavi is an experienced international development practitioner with over 15 years of involvement in the NGO and corporate sectors. She has worked and led teams in grants, programmes, fundraising and capacity enhancement in Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and the UK, and carried out short term assignments as a consultant in many other locations in Asia, Africa and Europe. She has managed multi-sectoral, multi-district programmes with bilateral and multilateral donors and corporate funders.

She has worked on economic justice initiatives, focusing on primary producer collectives and vocational training for war affected communities. She also brings a wealth of experience in leading initiatives on gender and inter community collaboration as a standalone and cross cutting theme in programmes and as a trainer. As much of her experience comes from working in small and medium organisations, she is a strong advocate of capacity strengthening initiatives and collaborative cross learning experiences. In the recent past, she has been a development manager with Mother’s Choice in HK, a community consultant and also authored a children’s book.

She is a long-term volunteer with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, an organisation committed to every girl and young woman reaching their highest potential. She volunteers as a global leadership facilitator and as a leader working with 7 – 10-year-old girls.

She has a master’s degree in Social Development Practice, a post-graduate diploma in Marketing and a bachelor’s in Computer Science.

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