Orazio Bellettini

Orazio is a social entrepreneur and policy expert. He co-founded and directed Grupo FARO and Fundación FUEGOS (an Ecuadorian civil society organisation promoting health and wellbeing through multisectoral collaboration). He is a graduate of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Mason Fellow (2004), Ashoka Fellow, and, since 2008, a member of AVINA’s sustainable development leaders network for Latin America. Orazio has led, coordinated and promoted diverse networks and collaborative spaces at the regional, national and local levels: the Iniciativa Latinoamericana de Investigación para las Políticas Públicas, the Confederación Ecuatoriana de Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil – a coalition of more than 100 Ecuadorian Civil Society Organisations with the aim of facing collectively challenges shared by citizen organisations in Ecuador, and MANPANOR, the Mancomunidad Pacífico Norte de Manabí, a common-wealth formed by four Ecuadorian Municipalities, as well as private sector and civic organisations, to promote innovative projects for economic recovery after an earthquake that hit the northern coast of Ecuador four years ago. He is author of several studies on the relationship between research and policy, the role of think tanks in developing countries and collaboration around knowledge production. As a member of the cohort of the Think Tank Initiative’s grantees, Orazio proactively engaged with organisations in Africa and Asia and supported the first steps of a think tank network in Africa.