About
Our Purpose
To serve humanity so all may live as God intended.
Our Motto
Justice. Compassion. Love.
WHO WE ARE
We are the global humanitarian arm of the Seventh-day Adventist Church—part of the 20-million strong Adventist community, with hundreds of thousands of churches globally and the world’s largest integrated healthcare and education network.
We deliver relief and development assistance to individuals in more than 118 countries—regardless of their ethnicity, political affiliation, gender, or religious association.
By partnering with local communities, organizations, and governments, we are able to deliver culturally relevant programs and build local capability for sustainable change.
ADRA Timor-leste
ADRA Timor-Leste is a professional, learning Technical Expertise and efficient faith-based organization driven by values of compassion and integrity. We see opportunities for progress through transformative and sustainable partnerships with local and national government, civil society, churches, as well as academic and professional organizations.
We are committed to long-term engagement with communities in Timor-Leste, mobilizing and encouraging communities toward collective action. We believe in the tremendous human potential of women, men, boys and girls and are committed to supporting the energy, talents, and aspirations of people in shaping their own futures and strengthening the nation.
OUR TEAM
Our staff have qualifications, skills, and experience in conducting needs assessments, community mobilisation, and facilitating communities in project planning; horticulture, conservation agriculture and agro-enterprise development training; facilitating market linkages; nutrition and health messaging; hygiene and sanitation promotion; design and construction of water systems and wells; monitoring, evaluation and reporting.
ADRA Timor-Leste employs 27 professional and purpose-driven staff with diverse skills and experience. Here is an introduction to just a few of our valued team members.
APOLINARIO DA SILVA
WATER TECHNICIAN
Apoli has been working as a Water Technician since 2011 making him one of ADRA Timor-Leste’s longest serving staff members. He has a broad set of technical skills and has developed a people-powered bore well drilling method that can reach 40 meters in depth and can be completed at a fraction of the costs of machine drilled wells. He says, “I enjoy my work because I can help an entire community who needs clean water. I transfer my knowledge to the community members I work with on how to survey the land and do the drilling. In two communities the people I trained formed a company for providing wells in their communities. The communities are happy that they can access clean water. In many places people had to walk more than 1 km to carry water every day. Now they get water close to home.”
ESMERALDA QUINTAO
NUTRITION OFFICER
“I feel very proud to work with the ADRA team. This is the first time leading the nutrition program. I have learned to ride a motorcycle by myself. I’m very proud to work with ADRA as Nutrition Officer because I can work directly with community leaders and visit people where they live. I feel proud when I’m conducting training for mothers’ groups by myself. Many people are not aware of hygiene but now they know the importance of hand washing before they prepare food. Recently, I taught a new recipe for making baby food using pumpkin, tomato and egg, and I noticed a woman writing everything down carefully. She told me that before she would only make white rice cooked with garlic for her children. Now she doesn’t buy baby food anymore.”
JANUARIO MORAIS
AGROENTERPRISE FACILITATOR
Januario is one of ADRA’s newest and youngest field staff. “I like facilitating training for producing ginger and elephant foot yam because it’s related to my education background. From doing this I have learned many things. As a facilitator I have seen changes in the ways people practice agriculture shifting from traditional methods to new, more productive methods and farmer’s mindsets changing from subsistence farming to market-oriented farming.”
IJOLINA SOARES
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT COMPONENT MANAGER
Ijolina started with ADRA as Project Manager of the Nutritious Foods Enterprises project before joining the Farmers to Markets Project. She says, “I’m thankful for the opportunity to work with ADRA. I am proud to the programs we run. I like that at ADRA we open and close our meetings with prayer. There are lots of opportunities for capacity building and learning. In the project we give training to people on how to save and manage money. I see people saving money. Before, many farmers didn’t know how to set prices and reinvest in their farms. Now people are very happy because they know how to manage their money. Before they thought of their land like their kitchen but now they know that they can also earn money by focusing their production on growing good quality products according to what the market needs.”
LEOCADIA GONCALVES
JUNIOR ACCOUNTANT
“As an accountant I help with office administration matters such as preparing financial reports every month to be reported to donors with the help of my manager, maintenance of filing, preparing staff salaries so that payment is timely, and many other things related to office administration. The thing that I like best about working with ADRA is the flexible working hours, efficient management, good workplace culture, and excellent opportunities to learn. I also have a good Manager who always guides me.”
MANUEL XIMENES
PROJECT MANAGER: HAHAN
“I enjoy my job a lot. When I began working with ADRA in 2014 my position was Logistics Officer and then I became a Field Office Coordinator and in 2018 I became a Project Manager. I enjoy working in ADRA because I feel like I am home and I learn a lot from ADRA because in my previous work I only did finance and admin but now I learn new things like how to make plans and design projects. I get opportunities to learn much from many people to improve my knowledge and capacity. When I first joined ADRA was very small—just a few staff—and then we got new projects and ADRA is growing and now many people and stakeholders know ADRA. In communities I see the lack of water and then we see how people change their behaviour and people learning to grow vegetables and continuing production even after the project finishes.”
