Two CRS SILC Staffers Win Practitioner of the Year Awards from SEEP

Two CRS employees — Marc Bavois and Dina Brick — won Practitioner of the Year awards from The SEEP Network recently at the annual SEEP conference. These awards are given to practitioners from SEEP member organizations who embody using collaboration and learning to scale impact.

Practitioner of the Year, Resilient Markets: Dina Brick, CRS

Dina has shown outstanding leadership in supporting, scaling and facilitating market systems approaches in challenging contexts. She is a market systems champion both in her work internally with CRS and in partnership with other organizations. As a few examples of her contributions: She served on the Technical Working Group for the revision of the latest edition of the Minimum Economic Recovery Standards and continues to support MERS outreach and uptake; She served on the Steering Committee of SEEP’s Disaster Risk Reduction project; and she is a member of the Markets-In-Crises Advisory Committee. Beyond this, she also facilitates CRS’s internal Market Systems community of practice and tirelessly promotes the good work and contributions of CRS staff who are actively implementing market systems programming. In all of these endeavors, she is a dedicated and lively contributor--influencing and leading others to adopt, scale and support Market Systems thinking.

Practitioner of the Year, Savings Groups: Marc Bavois, CRS

Marc Bavois, from Catholic Relief Services, has been a champion of Savings Groups for at least a decade, and he is recognized for having pioneered approaches and programming to expand the scale of Savings Groups, and deepen their outreach among poorer populations. What we appreciate most about Marc is that he shares his expertise and his time generously. Over the past year, Marc has served on the Steering Committee of SG2018 and contributed to learning sessions at both SG2018 and the SEEP Annual Conference. He also served as a resource person for several SEEP publications and was an instrumental member of the research team that designed and implemented a cross-organizational risk assessment of Savings Groups across four countries – which you can learn more about at the annual meeting of the Savings-Led Working Group this afternoon. Over the next few days, you can be sure to find Marc bending the ear of funder regarding his latest ideas, and debating frontier issues with fellow Savings Group experts. But anybody who wants to learn or discuss anything about Savings Groups will have Marc’s undivided attention and the passion that he brings to his work. And for that, our sector and our network are both stronger.