Dr. John R Batten, MBE
John currently lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya. He has worked with INGOs and CSOs in the USA, EU, Asia and Africa, since 1978. John began his development career with IIRR in the Philippines, where he worked as Chairman of the Education and Culture Group and Director of International Training between 1978 and 1985. John came to Kenya as a Regional Technical Adviser (RTA - OD, Training and TA) with CARE International, from 1986 to 1989; and then became Country Director of ActionAid Kenya, from 1989 to 1995. John was appointed CEO of ActionAid International in London from 1995 to 1998, and returned to Nairobi to take up the post of Director General, AMREF, from 1998 to 2001.
In 2002, John Co-Founded the Poverty Eradication Network (PEN), a Kenyan based INGO working with Capacity Building for CSOs in East and Southern Africa. While with PEN John played a significant role in promoting and strengthening CSO networks, including the founding of ‘Viwango’ (Kenya’s first independent certification body for CSOs) and the establishment of the CSO Reference Group, which galvanised CSO inputs to the new PBO Act 2013. During this time John also consulted with a wide range of CSO in Africa on Organisational Change, Good Governance and Local Resource Mobilization.
While John remains the CEO of PEN, since June 2012, he has handed over responsibility for day-to-day operations of PEN and taken on a change management assignment as Executive Director of the Centre of Africa Family Studies (CAFS), a pan-African capacity building organisation working in the field of Reproductive Health.
John was a CSO representative serving as a member of the first NGO Coordination Board in Kenya, established in 1993, and was also Board member and Chairman of the Resource Alliance, 1997 to 2005. He currently serves as Chairman of Viwango, Chairman of CBM Kenya and since 2007 has been a Board member of CBM International. In 2013, John became a Trustee of ‘Childline’ Kenya and accepted to serve as a member of the Advisory Board of ICNL.