Amanda provides technical advice and leadership to SDDirect's work in the field of Gender Based Violence (GBV) prevention and response as part of SDDirect’s GBV Portfolio team. She is the Country Co-Lead for SDD’s portfolio in Malawi, focussing on Strategy, Learning and Adaptation.
Amanda brings over 15 years’ experience working at strategic level in social development programming in both development and emergency programmes in complex settings. Amanda brings research, civil society partnership and delivery expertise in social accountability, VAWG, and youth leadership, with particular expertise in behaviour change, gender equality and social inclusion, and PSEAH. Amanda’s considerable experience, knowledge and relationships from living and working in Sierra Leone, Malawi and India, and working regionally in Southern Africa and Asia inform her approach to equitable partnership and commitment to the decolonise aid movement.
Longer-term assignments include Amanda’s role as Team Leader for the SABI programme, a national social accountability programme delivered in Sierra Leone, which successfully supported citizens to engage service providers in over 600 communities and influenced the Ministry of Education to ban corporal punishment in schools; and Amanda’s role as Deputy Team Leader for the Tithetse Nkhanza! VAWG Prevention and Response programme in Malawi, which has informed the development of the Pamodzi Kuthetsa Nkhaza programme which aims to begin implementation in 2023. Amanda also served within the Ebola response in Sierra Leone, for which she was awarded the Ebola Medal for Service to West Africa by the UK Government.
Shorter-term assignments include a Gendered Political Economy Analysis into the power sector in Sierra Leone, evaluations of national and global programmes, and technical advisory support in the development of programme Theories of Change, strategies and Monitoring, Research, Learning and Adaptation frameworks.
Amanda has a Master’s degree in Education Planning, Economics and International Development from UCL Institute of Education
In her free time, Amanda enjoys singing, exercising and spending time with her two, glorious children.