Date:
Location:
Speakers: Filipe Alfaiate and Ariana Almeida, Co-Founders of the Timor-Leste based NGO, Empreza Diak
About the session:
Filipe and Ariana will be talking about how their dream to make a difference became an award winning NGO empowering poor women and their families in Timor-Leste, the newest and most impoverished country in Asia.
They will focus on what can be learned from the challenges, mistakes and successes they faced in the past six years while launching the timorese NGO Empreza Diak (which means Good Business) and developing a sustainable team of staff, volunteers and donors. All passionate about changing lives by creating opportunities that build better lives, not charity. They will share unexpected outcomes, challenges, successes and what they would have done differently. And how they found that passion, hard work and innovation can make a difference even in the most challenging of places. They will also talk about why and how they used the over 2 million USD fundraised between 2011 and 2015 to focus on women economic empowerment, social business and inclusive markets, in programs now reaching over 5,000 vulnerable people.
About the speakers:
Filipe Alfaiate is a Mason Fellow and MC/MPA candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. An innovator, critical and strategic thinker, he has a passion for new ideas and unique expertise at intersection of Law, social issues and development. Filipe has launched and led social projects in Portugal, Brazil and Timor-Leste focusing on social change, economic development and social inclusion. He has 16 years’ experience as adviser and consultant to governments, private sector firms and non-governmental organizations, in Law, Innovation, Economic Empowerment and Policy and worked in more than 20 countries.
A qualified lawyer in Portugal, Timor-Leste and England, Filipe was senior associate in the international law firm Clifford Chance. Later, he was the senior adviser of Timor-Leste’s Prime Minister providing advice on investment, Law and the drafting of the country’s National Strategic Plan. In 2010 Filipe co-Founded and directed the timorese NGO Empreza Diak, focusing his work on business development and innovation.
Ariana Almeida is a social entrepreneur, gender equality and economic empowerment expert and program manager. Her passion for fighting social injustices and for working with those with fewer opportunities in life to build better futures inspired her to work in development. After working with Save the Children (UK, Brazil, Hong Kong, Timor-Leste) and Plan International (Timor-Leste) she co-founded the social enterprise Empreza Diak, which received the prestigious Sergio Vieira de Mello Human Rights Award, 2014 by Timor-Leste’s President. She led the organization’s women economic empowerment program and advocated for gender equality. Ariana holds a Law Degree and brings her law and development expertise to her management, advocacy and program and policy design.
