Sayma Sayed — Consultant

Sayma Sayed is a development practitioner with more than 11 years of experience. She specializes in different types of Project design and management, Research, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL), serving vulnerable communities through large-scale, multi-year, foreign-funded projects in Bangladesh. She completed her Bachelor of Social Sciences and Master’s in Social Sciences in Economics from the Department of Economics of the University of Dhaka. She is an expert in implementing Participatory Action Research with children, women, and men of vulnerable communities.

During her career, Sayma has managed the World Bank-funded Project, which sought to encourage waste pickers to recycle PET plastic waste across seven new sites in Bangladesh in return for standardized pricing and work benefits. Oversaw partner activities related to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA), Sexual Harassment (SH), and Grievance-Based Violations (GBV) risk assessment programs, implementing policies and procedures. Managed project team – including field workers, teachers, and trainers across nine sites in Dhaka and Barisal– and responsibilities, such as project orientation, progress reporting, participant feedback, and maintaining compliance of the projects according to NGOAB and donor agencies’ requirements. Served in a variety of leadership roles across the project management cycle for foreign-funded projects designed to help vulnerable communities, including projects funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), Big Lottery Fund, Comic Relief, and ChildHope, among others. Provided technical guidance on forming a union and capacity building for the Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)-funded Institutional Capacity Building of the Organizations of Informal Waste Pickers in the Waste Management System in Bangladesh project. She was interviewed by the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, for training materials after exemplifying best practices as a facilitator for the £11 million FCDO-funded “Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia” project implemented in Bangladesh and Nepal. She led all MEAL activities, including technical proposals, project monitoring frameworks, qualitative and quantitative data collection, progress reporting, Participatory Action Research, safeguarding, and communication with development partners, staff, and other stakeholders. She served as a Research Associate for Oxfam, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Save the Children-funded projects, managing qualitative and quantitative data collection, training field enumerators, supervising survey activities, conducting analysis, and compiling final reports. She also conducted research projects on DRR, Climate-Resilient livelihoods, etc.