Celia Santos - Director for Timor-Leste Programme

(based in Dili, Timor-Leste)

Ms. Santos provided consultancy services to CFSI at various points in time from the early-1980s until 1999 when she became a full-time staff member and was soon thereafter seconded by CFSI to the UNHCR in West Timor, Indonesia. She returned to the Philippines in late 2000 - owing to serious security threats - and became involved in planning CFSI's response to urgent humanitarian needs in the conflict-affected areas of Mindanao. Ms. Santos was named Mindanao Project Coordinator in February 2001 and was responsible for organizing and managing all CFSI activity in the conflict-affected areas through 2005, much of it funded by a grant from the Post-Conflict Fund of the World Bank. She subsequently led CFSI's emergency response to natural disaster in Southern Leyte, Philippines. Ms. Santos began preparing for deployment to Timor-Leste in late 2006 and was named Director for Timor-Leste Programme in February 2007 in the context of cooperation between UNHCR and CFSI in that country. The aim of this cooperative effort is reconciliation and peace leading to the safe and dignified return home of internally displaced persons. A citizen of the Philippines, Ms. Santos earned the Bachelor of Science degree in Education at the University of the Philippines. She spent almost two decades in community organizing in the Philippines and four years in Nairobi, Kenya helping organize sustainable networks for the protection of children and prevention of child abuse and neglect.

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