Liana Who we are

Who we are

Liana was established in April 2005 by a group of three research and development professional representing different fields of expertise. These three founder members are Richard Coe, Ari Koivu and Eija Soini. More active development professionals have joined since then.

The nature of the organisation and the way it operates determine criteria for different types of membership. In practice regular members:

	must have a desire to contribute to livelihood and environmental development and have a vision of actions which are aligned with the purpose and approach of Liana.
	must have the professional competence and experience to make those contributions.

The organisation is a channel for these professionals for action. At the moment Liana members have expertise in:

	Rural development and sustainable livelihoods
	Natural resource management
	GIS and remote sensing for environmental monitoring and land use planning
	Research methods
	Organisational development
	Environmental education
	Community mobilisation and empowerment
	Project cycle management, project evaluation and appraisal
	Youth development
	Textile and product design
	Adult education
	Teaching English as a foreign language
	Human resources management

Members:

This is built on experience in consultancies and research and development organisations all over the world.

Liana is an organisation which functions entirely through the efforts of its members. Much of the work of Liana members is voluntary. Liana does not actively seek new members but welcomes membership of individuals who meet these criteria.

Individuals or registered organisations who wish to support the aims of Liana but can not become members as described above can become supporting members, as described in the rules.

The Board:

Richard Coe, Biometrician (Founder member, Liana Secretary)

Richard Coe has a professional background in biometrics and statistics. He trained, and later taught, at the University of Reading, UK. From there he got involved in a range of research and development projects in many countries. For the last 14 years he has been based at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Nairobi, Kenya. This has allowed him to work with many R+D professionals and institutions both in the tropics and the north. At ICRAF he has provided support to scientists and development professionals working throughout the tropics. His work has gone far beyond assisting with data collection design and data analysis. He has been responsible for research quality management, for improving strategic and organization planning, for research ethics and data management policies.

His areas of expertise are:

Planning sound data collection - generating the evidence needed for decision making
Baseline surveys, monitoring and evaluation data collection, impact analysis, adaptive management, experiments
Agriculture, rural development, natural resource management, environmental sciences
Managing data and information
Data analysis, quantitative modeling and statistics
Research project planning, integrating investigations with development activities
Planning participatory enquiries to generate quantitative evidence
Quality assurance for research and investigative activities
Research project evaluation
Professional training and capacity building - short courses, on-the-job training, mentoring

Home page: www.iki.fi/r.coe/

Ari Koivu, Geographer, Youth/Sports development expert (Founder member, Liana Vice-Chairperson)

Ari Koivu, is a Geographer (MSc) who has been actively involved in development research or development co-operation in Africa since 1994. Koivu has specific expertise in a relatively new field of development cooperation, Sports Development. He is one of the founding members of LiiKe ry which has become the leading sports development organisation in Finland. Koivu is currently leading large primary school support projects in Mtwara and Singida, Tanzania, funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Department for International Development Cooperation. In addition he runs other smaller cooperative projects in Kenya and South Africa, and works actively in making 'Sports for Development' concept more widely known through awareness raising campaigns, conferences, workshops, TV documentaries and publishing. Before and in addition to the work done through Liike ry, Koivu has been actively involved in Sports Development in Mtwara region by working as a consultant for the Finnish Sports Federation (FSF) (since 1996). Primary and secondary schools receive assistance and aid in developing schools' sports facilities and improving physical education curricula. Koivu is the Executive Director of Liike ry, based in Helsinki, Finland.

Eija Soini, Development geographer (Founder member, Liana Chairperson)

Eija has a PhD in Development Geography from the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has also studied a range of other subjects including Biology, African studies, Cultural Anthropology, Education, and Remote Sensing and GIS, all of which she has used in subsequent work. Her PhD thesis is on Livelihoods, environment and land use interactions in the highlands of East Africa.

She has work experience from both private and international non-profit (World Agroforestry Centre) sectors. Her research and project management work has concentrated on land use/land use change and sustainable livelihoods, ecologic implications of land use change, land cover monitoring system methodology development, capacity building related to spatial tools for sustainable development and livelihood surveys, and digital map production. Her projects have involved working with local government, NGOs and directly with rural people. In addition to managing research projects she has management and supervisory experience from heading the World Agroforestry Centre East and Central Africa GIS unit, and acting as the GIS global coordinator. She is currently coordinating the Liana project 'Improving rural livelihoods by rainwater harvesting in the lowlands of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania', coordinating Liana volunteer activities, taking care of the administration and financial management of Liana, and occasionally doing short-term consultancies.

Home page: www.iki.fi/eija.soini/

Kirsi Saaristo, Geographer, Education specialist (Joined Liana September 2005, Elected as a board member in May 2006)

Kirsi is an Educationalist and an Environmentalist with MSc degree in Management of Natural Resources and Sustainable Agriculture in the Tropics (NORAGRIC/ Agricultural University of Norway) and a post graduate diploma in Practical Pedagogic. Her masters theses focused on Livelihoods and Risk Management Strategies of Pastoral Communities in Ethiopia. Kirsi has almost twenty years of experience from education sector including teaching Geography and Environmental Science, improving quality of basic education, education management and research. She has worked nine years in Africa .

Recently she worked in Somalia/ Somaliland as a primary education project manager employed by Save the Children UK. 1999-2003 she was contracted as a programme advisor for District Based Support to Education Programme in Tanzania, and in 1993-1995 she worked at Macha Secondary School in Zambia, employed by the Norwegian Volunteer Service. In Norway she taught Science and Geography in 1986-1993 , and in 1996-1997 she worked as a District Education Counselor. Moreover in 2003 she was employed as a researcher at the Department of Social and Moral Philosophy, University of Helsinki, focusing on education in Africa in general, and especially on primary education and child’s right to open future in Eastern Africa. For 2005-2006 she was employed by the Life and Peace Institute in Nairobi. She is currently back at Save the Children.

Her areas of expertise are Environmental Education, community mobilisation and empowerment, participatory methods, training needs assessment and project cycle management.

Jarno Hämäläinen, Forester (Joined September 2005)

Jarno Hämäläinen has completed his Master's studies with specialisation in environmental forest management at the Faculty of Forestry, University of Joensuu, Finland. His thesis (published in 2000) deals with the cost effects that originate from field storage of logging residues in large-scale procurement of forest chips. The research was conducted in the framework of the National Wood Energy Technology Programme. He has also consolidated his expertise in Geographic Information System (GIS) management by attending specialisation studies at the Agricultural University of Norway (Ås) and Häme Polytechnic (Evo/Finland).

Jarno Hämäläinen has gained long-term fieldwork experience from two African countries. In Tanzania he assisted the Rural Integrated Project Support Programme (RIPS) within the fields of IT facility and community forestry support in Mtwara and Lindi Regions. In the Province of Zambézia, Mozambique he served the Sustained Forest Resource Management Programme (PMSR) as the Provincial Forest Adviser. Both these development programmes were supported by the Government of Finland. Currently his main development interests focus on wild land fire prevention, control and management that effectively involve local communities, public institutions and private sector, and guarantees sufficient incentives for each stakeholder group. He has been actively sharing some action research based findings and fire monitoring experiences from Mozambique through regional wild land fire networks (Regional Subsahara Wildland Fire Network, Southern African Fire Network), Fire Management Unit at UN-FAO, and at Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC).

Jarno Hämäläinen is currently working as raster production manager in a Danish ground surveying and mapping company in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Other Regular members:

Miika Mäkelä, Human Geographer (Joined in May 2006)

Miika has an MSc in Geography from the University of Helsinki, Finland. His study interests have focused on GIS and Remote Sensing technology. In 2004 he got his first taste of Africa, while doing his Master's Thesis in Kenya and Uganda. Currently Miika lives in Nairobi, Kenya with his wife and son. He works for the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) as a Spatial Analyst, specifically on a Payments for Environmental Services (PES) project.

Home page: www.iki.fi/miika.makela/

Aichi Kitalyi, Agricultural scientist (Joined February 2008)

Aichi Kitalyi (PhD Agriculture), a Tanzanian citizen, is an international research and development specialist, with over three decades of working experience in rural Africa. She worked with the government of Tanzania in agricultural extension and livestock research from mid 1970's to mid 1990's. From there she joined the international development cooperation sector, where she first worked with a Sida Regional land management unit (RELMA) as Animal husbandry advisor. She moved to World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in 2004 to strengthen the farming systems and intensification component of integrated land management program. As from mid 2006 Aichi is managing the ICRAF Tanzania country program, working with national and international development partners to contribute to ICRAF's vision of advancing both science and practice of agroforestry to tackle the global challenges of poverty and environment protection. Aichi is well travelled in Africa and has been impressed by the few champion farmers who have transformed their lives and conserved the environment through adoption of profitable and sustainable land management practices. Her dream for rural Africa is for a massive adoption of good practices by smallholder farmers so as to have villages, districts, regions… where champion farmers outnumber the non-adopters. Once in that situation and with strong capacity building and supportive institutional, policy and legal framework, she is convinced poverty will be history in Africa.

Istamil Msangi, Agricultural extensionist (Joined in March 2008)

Msangi is a Tanzanina citizen and has a Certificate in Animal health & production and a Diploma in Animal production. He has extensive work experience especially in the field of in Soil and Water management development and research projects from the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SWMRG, i.e. Soil and Water Management Research Group). Msangi worked for the University for over ten years. Since 2006 October he has worked as a field consultant for the Liana project Improving rural livelihoods by rainwater harvesting in the lowlands of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Liana volunteers (Regular members of Liana):

Rachel Stern, Anthropologist/Psychologist

Rachel's task was to compile an adult education package for the poor and marginal drylands of East Africa. Subjects included: Literacy training, health, hygiene, nutrition, environmental education, dryland agricultural methods (incl. water management), livestock and rangeland management, simple maths. Rachel was based in Nairobi during her assignment with Liana from October 2007 to March 2008.

Erja-Riitta Alander, Textile designer

Erja-Riitta's task was to lead a one-month long basketry workshop in Kapedo village in the northern semi-desert area of Kenya. The Kikapu workshop (Kikapu=basket in Swa), Kapedo basketry workshop for women to create new designs and products for improved marketing and income generation was implemented together with the local CBO KEDA (Kapedo Educational and Development Association). The workshop took place in April-May 2008.

Susanna Mäkelä, Human Resources Management Specialist

Susanna is compiling a review on Firewood/Energy saving stoves based on documentation available on the Internet. This will guide us in the selection of models for further testing and introduction in our planned project in Mwanga 'Improving livelihoods and environment by rainwater harvesting' and elsewhere. The work will be done in Oct-Dec 2008. Susanna is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Supporting members:

Marja Färm (Joined February 2006)

Matti Jalonen (Joined February 2006)

Anneli Soini (Joined February 2006)

Reijo Soini (Joined February 2006)

JSu (Joined October 2007)

Pia Rinne (Joined October 2007)