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Aldo Benini, Ph.D.
Senior Social Scientist
Consultant

Main Responsiblities

As the Social Scientist consultant, Aldo is responsible for assisting in Landmine Impact Survey instrumentation and analysis. In addition to developing, and pre-testing instruments and protocols for the surveys, he advises SAC and its partners in methodological questions and travels as necessary to support country surveys where SAC programs are taking place.

Background

Aldo has over fifteen years experience in assistance for victims of war, management of large-scale rural development, and in research, funding, and consultancy for partnerships in development and humanitarian aid. He’s worked for organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Protestant Association for Cooperation in Development (funding agency of the German Protestant churches, known as “EZE”), and for the Swiss Red Cross in the Sudan, Bosnia, Iraq, South Africa, Germany, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Between 1983 and 1986, while Program Coordinator for the Bangladesh country program of the Lutheran World Federation, Aldo coordinated a multi-sector program (small farmer support, health care, and public works) totaling over 1700 staff working with the poorest segments of a populace of seven million inhabitants. Among the projects he facilitated while working for the ICRC (1989 – 1998) were the organization of humanitarian law and Red Cross information campaigns during critical transition in South Africa, and while in Afghanistan he identified casualty evacuation routes from deep inside the country, negotiated access and set up the first cross-border post. And finally, as a Visiting Research Scientist at California Polytechnic State University from 1995 through 1998 Aldo published on subjects as diverse as computer simulation programs for relief agencies, biological hazards (Ebola virus), organizations of poor people, mechanisms of ethnic violence, and Switzerland.

Education

In 1979, Aldo received his Ph.D. in Social Sciences, with a thesis on Community Development in a Multi-Ethnic Society (The Gambia, West Africa), from the University of Bielefeld in Germany.

All the Rest

He is a Swiss citizen, residing in the US and is fluent in English, German and French. Aldo is married to Janet Benini, a disaster manager with the US Department of Transportation, and has four children from a previous marriage.