Senior Associate
Nico van Oudenhoven co-founded ICDI in 1994. He is by training a child psychologist, but in the course of his long career, among others, with the University of Leiden, UNESCO, UNICEF, Bernard Van Leer Foundation, International Child Development Initiatives and International Centre for Child and Youth Studies, he made entries into adjacent social disciplines.
He works at the intersection of action research, NGO capacity building, programme and policy development, advocacy and training.
Nico has worked in all continents, but always on behalf of socially excluded children and youth and with a special focus on their psychosocial well-being.
Nico’s areas of expertise include: Early Child Development (ECD), formal and non-formal education (pre-school and basic education), out-of-family and foster care, capacity building and teacher training, policy development and programme design for children and youth, programme and project research and evaluation, and management of international NGO’s, Universities, UN organisations, and development organizations.
As a child
Nico was born during the Second World War and grew up in a family of six children, which was the average family size during those days. Although formally enlisted in a preschool, his mum kept him at home most of the time as she felt this a much better environment to flourish in.
