Dr. Jaime Aristotle B. Alip. a Filipino, is the founder of the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD), a group of mutually reinforcing poverty-focused microfinance institutions that provides credit, savings and microinsurance services to the Filipino poor. Now the largest MFI in the Philippines, CARD was created in 1986 as a social development foundation and registered its bank in 1997. It is now composed of the CARD NGO, the CARD Bank, the CARD Mutual Benefit Association, and the CARD Training Center. The CARD MRI is currently servicing more than 137,000 clients.

Dr. Alip currently works full-time as CARD MRIs’ Managing Director. He recently has signed a partnership agreement with IDEAS, which has worked with CARD since 1999.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Alip has been in the forefront of rural development, working both in the public and private sectors. He cut his teeth in development work when he joined PBSP in 1978, the largest grant-making NGO in the country. He honed his skills at the Agricultural Credit Policy Council and played a pivotal role in the government’s move to launch the Grameen Bank Replication Program. From 1992 to 1995 he worked for the CIDSE, an umbrella organization of Catholic NGOs, managing its development program in Vietnam, serving first as technical advisor and later as Representative of its Ho Chi Minh City Office. He was instrumental in bringing to Vietnam the CARD model of providing microfinancial services to poor women. Upon his return to the Philippines, he was invited by the government to serve as Assistant Secretary for Support Services, Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), a cabinet-level post he held until the end of the Ramos Administration in June 1998. He also served for a year during President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s first term as her Undersecretary for Operations at the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) primarily working to set up the government’s poverty alleviation program, the KALAHI-CIDDS.

Dumisani Nyoni, has worked with the global campaign for youth employment launched in 2002 at the Youth Employment Summit (YES) in Alexandria Egypt. He was largely responsible for mobilizing youth groups in over 60 countries to establish national level coalitions known as YES Country Networks to tackle the challenges of youth unemployment in their countries. Mr. Nyoni has provided online support, guidance in strategic planning and alliance building and has contributed to the overall development of these networks.

Previously, Mr. Nyoni worked with the Earth Council Institute, an international organization established as a result of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and mandated with coordinating the implementation of Agenda 21 at the local level. At the Earth Council, Mr. Nyoni launched the youth component of the Earth Council’s “Earth Charter” initiative (www.earthcharter.org).