Secretariat
The Global Alliance is led and coordinated by the Urban Hub at Save the Children.
Dr. Sarah Sabry
Founding Chair and steering committee member, Global Alliance – Cities4Children
Save the Children, Global Lead – Urban
Sarah is responsible for advancing Save the Children’s work in the urban context, especially for the most marginalized children. She founded and leads the Global Alliance – Cities 4 Children on behalf of Save the Children. She is also a co-editor of the blog and research series of Cities4Children. Sarah has over 20 years of experience in development practice and research. She worked and consulted for various organisations including the Ford Foundation, IIED, IDRC, the American University in Cairo, and the Arab human rights fund. She has managed an NGO working on poverty reduction in Cairo, been a grant maker, a researcher, lecturer and project manager. Her work, research and writing has mostly focused on urban poverty with a focus on slums/informal settlements and on youth development. She holds a PhD in development studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has taught at SOAS and at the University of Zurich.
Dr. Anupama Nallari
Save the Children, Urban Research and Learning Advisor
Anupama is a member of the urban team at Save the Children. She is a co-editor of the blog and research series of Cities4Children. She has over 15 years of experience as a designer and research consultant and has worked with global children’s organisations like UNICEF as well as held research and teaching posts in academic institutions in New York and Singapore. Her past work includes exploratory research on common space in informal settlements in India, facilitating child-focused participatory planning and design workshops and projects, developing child-friendly community indicators to promote child right’s respecting environments, developing neighbourhood and housing level Quality of Life indicators and supporting the development of global guidance and principles for public spaces for children in both formal and informal contexts. She received her doctorate in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Steering Commitee
Dr. Sara Candiracci
ARUP, Associate Director
Sara is an urban planner, programme manager and social researcher with 19 years of professional experience in the field of inclusive and resilient urban development and planning, with a focus on vulnerable urban contexts. She leads the Inclusive and Resilient Cities portfolio of Arup International Development, and the Child friendly cities agenda, which received in 2020 the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) Award for “Best Use of Thought Leadership”. Before joining Arup in 2017, Sara has worked with the UN (UN-Habitat, UNESCO), Development Banks (World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank), Local Governments (Quito, Ecuador and Maputo, Mozambique) and INGOs (CUAMM, Etimos) in Africa, Latin America and South East Asia. She holds a PhD in urban planning, with a thesis on the role of cultural heritage in social development and place-making in East Africa.
Victoria Chavez
Van Leer Foundation- Urban95 Expert
Victoria is a Senior urban planner and architect with over a decade of experience in sustainable urban development, focusing on creating child-friendly cities through policy innovation, participatory planning and community engagement. As the Urban95 Expert in the Foundation’s Support & Learning team, she provides technical assistance on urban planning and strategies across programme portfolios, like India, Brazil, Jordan, Israel, The Netherlands and many cities across Latin Ameria & Africa; contributing to the building of internal and external capacity on social-spatial impact in cities at scale.
Before joining the Foundation, she co-founded Huasipichanga, an organization dedicated to urban development using participatory and co-creation methodologies. At Huasipichanga, she developed innovative concepts and strategies to promote sustainability and child-friendliness in cities across Latin America, Europe, and Africa particularly in sustainable mobility, public space, neighbourhood planning, social justice, and monitoring and evaluation.
Jens Aerts
Cities Alliance, Urban Advisor
Jens is an architect-engineer and urban planner, with 20 years of experience in climate resilient and child-responsive urban planning, working with cities and municipalities, international institutions, NGOs and urban developers. Currently he is the global urban advisor for the Safe and Cities Program and provides technical assistance to the World Bank Pakistan, the EU Delegation in Ethiopia and the Cities Alliance secretariat. Previously, he worked as Urban Specialist at UNICEF HQ, where he supported country offices in city-focused child-responsive programs and child-friendly cities initiatives. He authored UNICEF’s Handbook on child-responsive urban planning and contributed to various technical reports, guides and trainings that link urban health, road safety and community design, such as the Street for Kids program of the Global Designing Cities Initiative. He holds a Master in Science from Leuven University (Belgium) and a Master in Urban Planning from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain).
Atsani Ariobowo
FIA Foundation, Director of Child and Youth Health
Before his role with the Foundation, Atsani was the Manager of Global Road Safety Projects with the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) in Geneva, Switzerland, managing Fondation Botnar’s child road safety challenge, a global safer mobility programme spanning thirteen cities. Previous to this Atsani was the Lead for VicRoads International, the road authority for the State Government of Victoria in Australia, responsible for winning and implementing international projects funded by multi-lateral banks such as the WB, ADB and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Atsani also has had professional experience in the consulting and energy industry. He holds a Master of Commerce from Melbourne University and a double degree in International Trade and Management.
TBC
UN-Habitat, Programme Management Officer for the Human Rights and Social Inclusion Unit
TBC
Aline Rahbany
World Vision International, Technical Director, Urban Programming
Aline leads World Vision International’s global urban work as technical director on urban programming. She has worked in the international non-profit organization industry since 2008. In her current role, she leads the mainstreaming of urban programming across World Vision’s global strategy and operations. She also supports program, strategy and capabilities development for development and humanitarian responses in cities and other urban areas across multiple countries. She has a Master’s Degree focused on health education and community development from the American University of Beirut. She am passionate about inclusive cities and advocating for groups who are “deliberately silenced or preferably unheard”. She is Lebanese living in Toronto, Canada.