Donna Sillan, MPH, is an international public health consultant, with 28 years of experience in international health development work, focusing on Child Survival programming. She is a master trainer and facilitator in the areas of program design, monitoring and evaluation, planning, management and community-based health information systems and nutrition. As a health educator, her focus is on behavior change approaches. Her interest in nutrition has led her to become an advocate and trainer of the Positive Deviance/Hearth methodology and she recently wrote a field handbook on this intervention, published by CORE for the PVO community.
She has been the team leader on numerous primary health care and child survival evaluations. Since 1987 she has facilitated training workshops in Asia, Africa and Latin America for community health care workers and trainers working in child survival initiatives. Her philosophy is proven by the strong commitment to results, generated by participants in her workshops and training programs.
Living for 11 years in Asia, in a professional capacity, she worked both at the country and regional level. She has worked extensively in Indonesia and has done short-term work in Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Vietnam, East Timor, Maldives, and Afghanistan. Her assignments in Africa have taken her to Somalia, Ethiopia, Mali, Malawi, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Tanzania. In Central and South America she has worked in Honduras, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, and Haiti.
Recently, I decided to start my own NGO and apply the lessons I have learned to ONE community and follow the principles of grass-roots development. Along with Tsegaye Bekele, we co-founded Common River in the coffee growing region of Sidama, Ethiopia in a village called Aleta Wondo. It is where Common River will create a Positive Deviance Development model for replication in other parts of Ethiopia and the developing world.
We also formed a coffee company in order to export the wonderful coffee bean that is found in Aleta Wondo. The coffee won international acclaim at an International Cupping Competition in Addis Ababa in Feb. 2008 and is now being sold on-line at aletawondo.com and at the Whole Foods in Mill Valley, California. One Hundred percent of the profits are donated to Common River to fund the development program in Aleta Wondo.
Her services are available for short term assignments. Attached find her CV and Biodata form.