Always looking for opportunities for young people to share their wisdom and open new spaces for actions that will excite their communities and friends
I want to see physical education as important as the rest of the school curricula
Presently, Mr. Connolly is the UNICEF Representative, a.i. for UNICEF Panama, and Senior Adviser, HIV/AIDS for the UNICEF Regional Office in for Latin America and the Caribbean.
He has more than twenty-five years of experience working with international organizations addressing health and development concerns of children and young people in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East; including several years in UNICEF and UNAIDS Headquarters.
Some of his most exciting work has been on sports for development strategic planning, with an emphasis on gender. Promoting sports and recreation for adolescent females in Palestine during the occupation presented great challenges, along with creating opportunities for young “street girls” in Latin America were particularly rewarding experiences. More recently, a strong partnership with the NBA and several NBA players from Latin America and the Caribbean have provided exciting challenges to engage professional athletes in giving back to their communities and countries of origin, to promote education through organized sports, and growing the game of basketball as an important intervention for youth leadership and health promotion.
He has been the Adviser on child protection, health promotion, and HIV/AIDS to several organizations including the Children Investment Fund Foundation, World Health Organization, and Street Kids International. He has extensive experience in development of global advocacy and programme strategies; working in multi-disciplinary teams and resource mobilization.
Mr. Connolly is also an Advisory board member of Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), and Doctors of the World–USA, and former preceptor, Yale University School of Public Health.
He attended Universidad Javeriana and Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia and Tulane University in Louisiana, United States where he obtained his Bachelors Degree. He holds a Master in Public Health fro the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Louisiana.
