As Executive Vice President of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Azzedine Downes directs all of IFAW's operations, including direct oversight of the organization's 16 country offices, the Major Gifts department, the Grants Department, the Information Technology department and more than 250 employees around the world. He coordinates efforts between the various support offices of the organization and the programme and public affairs department.
Before joining IFAW in 1997, Mr. Downes worked for the non-profit organization, AMIDEAST, and was based in Morocco where he was the Director of a United States Agency for International Development sponsored education project aimed at improving rural school systems with a particular emphasis on improving education for girls in poor communities.
Mr. Downes holds a Masters Degree from Harvard University where he specialized in Administration, Planning and Social Policy. He went on to work at the Harvard Institute for International Development on integrated development projects in the area of financial planning and education systems for countries in the Middle East. He has written interactive training manuals on relational database design for Arabic language speakers, which were published at Harvard. As part of earning his Bachelor of Arts degree from Providence College, Mr. Downes studied French literature for two years at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Mr. Downes has specialized in working with governments and non-profit agencies throughout the Middle East, Europe and Africa seeking to improve planning, financial management and education systems. He has focused his career in areas of the world struggling to build efficient governing systems including countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Mr. Downes was named by President Clinton to be Acting Director of the Europe and Middle East office the Peace Corps. Mr. Downes also served as the first Country Director in Bulgaria and established the Peace Corps programs in small business development and education in that country.
While living in Jerusalem, Mr. Downes also headed the largest aid program to the Palestinian Authority working to establish systems within the ministries of Planning, Justice and Finance. In addition, as a part of the Peace Process, Mr. Downes organized a conference in the Gaza strip, which resulted in the first joint effort between the Israeli and Palestinian Ministries of Planning. Mr. Downes has lived in worked in the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East and speaks English, French, and Arabic.
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