Global Volunteer Initiative Team
Supports countries across the world to design and scale-up volunteering strategies
David Ponet, Senior Adviser, Global Volunteer InitiativeDavid Ponet leads GenU’s Global Volunteer Initiative (GVI) which helps countries create or scale volunteer engagement programmes to help accelerate results across a range of issues for children and young people. He previously managed the parliamentary engagement portfolio at UNICEF headquarters. In 2015-16, Ponet led UNICEF’s movement-building initiative on the global refugee crisis, a coalitional effort that sought to engage the public in multiple countries around the crisis to positively influence public opinion and discourse. Before joining UNICEF he was Director of Research for an investment research firm and has previously held positions in government and on political campaigns. He has a PhD in political science.
Eleanor Zeitlin, Volunteer Engagement and Strategy Specialist
Ellie Zeitlin is a strategist and facilitator with an eye toward social and environmental justice. She currently works with the Global Volunteer Initiative under GenU to help country office teams launch, scale, or innovate on community-driven, people-powered initiatives that work to improve the lives of children. Prior to joining UNICEF & GenU, Ellie worked at Purpose, where she supported some of the leading non-profit, social good institutions in the U.S. to build participatory communication campaigns that mobilized people around the causes they cared about. In this role, Ellie built the Design Sprint practice at the organization, a way of working directly with clients and end-users to collaboratively build and test campaigns in a week. Ellie brings a decade of experience in public mobilization, campaigning, and storytelling for change, along with extensive global practice in organizing groups, building consensus, and facilitating change projects.
Kenneth Chomba Njue, Volunteer Engagement and Network Specialist
Kenneth Chomba is a champion for young people’s leadership as engaged citizens advancing their rights. As a volunteer engagement and network specialist with GVI based in New York, he focuses mainly on developing innovative learning spaces and meaningful ways to engage for growing community of volunteer practitioners at the organization. He spends most of his time learning about how volunteer programmes are evolving, connecting needs and resources amongst practitioners while bringing external practice into the world of UNICEF. When Kenneth is not facilitating community engagement and spotting good stories to tell, you will find him co-facilitating volunteer strategy design workshops at country offices. He brings an infectious amount of passion, energy and enthusiasm into room – applying mindfulness in the way he facilitates to enable safe spaces for learning and collaboration. Prior to joining UNICEF in 2018, he facilitated campaign accelerator workshops in Africa with mobilization labs and also worked briefly at Ashoka to launch Ashoka Africa’s youth strategy while based in Nairobi.
Suchitra Sugar, Senior Programme Associate
Suchitra has been Senior Programme Associate with the Global Volunteer Initiative (GVI) since its inception in 2017. In this role, she keeps the team’s operations efficient and agile, spearheading planning, budgeting and other processes while working with the team to ensure all projects are on track and responsive to changing circumstances. She is also responsible for establishing, tracking and analyzing results indicators around the volunteer initiative globally. Passionate about environmental issues, she founded and co-chairs the UNICEF New York Staff Association Green Team and is an advocate for children’s access to green spaces. She holds a BA from Dartmouth College and an MS from Cornell University’s Dept of Natural Resources.