Deputy Director for Asia, UN Millennium Campaign

Minar Pimple is an expert on poverty reduction, governance and accountability with particular expertise in human rights, sustainable development and land rights/ownership. He has undertaken extensive campaign and advocacy work to promote basic social services, including education, health and sustainable livelihoods for the rural and urban poor at the sub-national, national and international levels.

Pimple currently serves as the Campaign’s Deputy Director for Asia, based in Bangkok. A social worker by training with a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Bombay, Pimple has worked on issues of poverty and low levels of socio-economic-political development in India since 1977.

Twenty five years of his professional life were devoted to establishing and acting as Chief Executive Officer of Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA), which is dedicated to working on human rights and sustainable development for the urban and rural poor in India. This brought him to directly engage with marginalized communities through training, education, mobilization and organization. Pimple worked to set up people’s organizations and institutions to address basic human rights such as housing, education, employment and credit and alleviate exploitation and discrimination by facilitating people’s political participation and empowerment. His advocacy initiatives have influenced policy, laws and plans of the state.