Theresa grew up in the rural Eastern Cape in a family that strove to live a lifestyle friendly to the planet and accessible to all. From a young age she was exposed to a diversity of realities that created the foundation for her deep love for people, the land and the relationships between them. She has over 15 years experience in the communications industry where she used her powerful visual storytelling skills to distil complex information into compelling content to make it accessible to much wider audiences. She believes that every human has something valuable to offer the collective, and that if we can create systems that make these skills transfers easier, we can overcome many of the barriers that are stacked against the majority of people.

As an active member of the day to day operations, Theresa brings to the Board oversight on what's happening on the ground for review, and feeds this back to the working team.

Yoliswa believes that people flourish when connected to each other and to our purpose. Through the principles of Permaculture she found a platform where her love for people, development, education, nutrition and environment were all housed under one roof. Yoli has a gift with people and a passion that is contagious. She is currently an educational facilitator at the Sustainability Institute in Stellenbosch. Her work includes the design of experiential learning curricula for children, facilitation of permaculture and ecology workshops for adults, and training of the agro-ecology academy students.

Yoli brings to the Board invaluable insights into the spaces between the divides that we strive to span. Her truth speaking continuously grounds us and calls us to attend to assumptions within ourselves before we take any steps out into the world.

Sue is a facilitator, evaluator and organisation development (OD) practitioner with a career in supporting public-minded organisations, projects, and initiatives to translate their intentions into practice. She has worked for 33 years in this field and has a deep interest in working reflectively and humanely supporting those she works with to develop an appreciation of the complexity of their situations and then to act on that. As an undergraduate, she studied the sociology and history of work and has a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Education. She has a long-standing commitment to work that builds community and seeks justice.

Sue brings to the Board a lifetime of sense-making of the inner workings of organisations, what causes them to stumble and what helps them to thrive.

Alex Mveleli is inspired by the work being done by civil organisations and feels being part of this brings him the most spiritual fulfilment. He believes we was born for a purpose and that is to do something to support others to fulfil their potentials, and it is with this intent that he joins Amava Oluntu, to pass on his skills and blessings to others.

After completing his BCom in accounting at The University of Fort Hare, he moved into the NGO sector where he could combine his love for numbers and his quest for social justice. Having managed grant funding models locally and internationally for over 10 years, he comes with a vast body of knowledge in financial and organisational management, and we are very excited for him to be joining our team and improving our systems.

Nadia is a transdisciplinary researcher working within the science-policy-practice interface on issues related to social-ecological resilience. Her research interests span both the social and ecological spheres and much of her experience comes from engaging in research and practice in southern Africa. For over a decade, she has been involved in applied research where she has focused on understanding knowledge exchange and transgressive processes linked to integrating environmental justice into decision-making contexts. More recently, her work focuses on the role of foresight and futures thinking and how to co-design creative, participatory processes for catalysing change, especially with youth.

Injairu Kulundu-Bolus is a partner in the Not Yet Uhuru! Collective and Post Doctorate researcher at the Environmental Learning Research Centre at Rhodes University. She is currently collaborating with the Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures Research Network. She is a decolonial scholar, writer, musician, and trickster practitioner that is learning how to alchemise binary based logics towards a paradigm of non-duality. She is interested in fugitive ways of re-imagining and re-sourcing the ambit and lived practice of decolonial love and a paradigm of peace. She is passionate about accompanying young people to create their own rites of passages towards a future worthy of their longing.

Paul Weinberg is a South African-born photographer, filmmaker, writer, curator, educationist, and archivist. He began his career in the late 1970’s by working for South African NGOs, and photographing current events for news agencies and foreign countries. He was a founder member of Afrapix and South, the collective photo agencies that gained local and international recognition for their uncompromising role in documenting apartheid, and popular resistance to it. He currently works as an independent curator, archivist and photographer. He supports Amava’s approach that works from the bottom up, empowering people through storytelling to gain strength and wisdom from their experiences and to share that with the world because he believes that stories break down barriers and walls and allow us to see a commonness that excites change and creates consciousness.

Jenny has spent years working at the interface between activism and the internet, locally and globally. She facilitates and coordinates spaces of exchange between digital rights and feminist activists. She works on self, collective and organisational care, responding to the trauma of systemic oppression experienced by so many activists. Time in the wilderness of the ocean and land keep her grounded and joyful, as does quiet space, Buddhist practice, and her tribe of godchildren. She is passionate about people coming together around issues that matter to their lives, sharing lived stories and shaping potential solutions. She is interested in resilience forged from working through the complexity of life in creative, fun, open ways to shift stuck beliefs and narratives. As she grows older, learning across generations has become particularly important to her.

Michèle works with systems in different contexts ranging from public to private sector including corporate companies, community-based organisations, education, healthcare, and academia. She is a collaborator, organisational coach, creative, and researcher interested in transformational, immersive experiences and systemic change. Michèle has a PhD in Public Health and draws on her background experience where she co-created, prototyped and validated the South African Triage Scale used in emergency centres and emergency care services across South Africa & Africa, selected MSF field hospitals and parts of Europe. She is fascinated by change in organisations as well as the conditions and contextual processes that enable this. She uses the theory and practice of Gestalt, Emotional Intelligence, Biomimicry, and Warm Data to support leaders in cultivating their influence as catalysts, their personal presence and field awareness to nurture generative relationships through dialogue.

Errol has thirty years of experience in the field of organisational and personal development. He has been involved in Corporate compliance, strategic development, team building and occupational safety and health. Over 22 years, he worked in the SA Navy in various posts and consulted in organisational development, research and development of leadership training.

Ashley is a Director at Community Women Action (NPO) in Eerste River. He has been actively volunteering and working within the NPO/NGO sector on women and youth development for the past 15 years. His main focus area is skills development and sustainable livelihoods for marginalised women, youth, persons living with disability, and LGBTQI groups. He has worked alongside various funding organisations as a facilitator, manager, board member and director at several organisations. He wishes to use this knowledge to support the mission and vision of Amava Oluntu.

Mzukisi has ten years experience working within environmental education and permaculture training and implementation. He is dedicated to working with people to create more resilient systems that aren’t at the expense of the natural world and lead to healthier lives for all.
He is currently in the process of putting all of his experience into practice, growing off grid land stewardship and building the collective systems of governance required.

Xho-pera, bow music, rural activist and future builder – this is Mthwakazi who hails from Eastern Cape, South Africa. Mthwakazi is a rural activist, a Xhosa Opera singer, songwriter and performer who was vocally trained at the London Trinity College from the age of 13. Currently a senior fellow for the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity (AFRE) hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Colombia University, she focuses on inequalities and the resilience of rural people towards identity and belonging. Her focus is on the healing of women and men and building activism in rural and urban communities. She is interested in creating spaces to come together to talk about gender inequality and to provide solutions for each other on how to overcome the gendered exercise of power in households and society. Her work is grounded by the questions “Who heals the healer?” and “Why heal?”

Sandile’s background is in retail and marketing which has fed his love for connecting with others and sharing ideas. He loves to engage in topics around education, what we mean when we talk about success and decent jobs in an unequal society. He is working on projects that allow him to learn and express himself using many different kinds of creativity. What inspires him is to see people sharing their gains with those around them so that everyone can rise together.

Sandile brings to the board the real lived experience of the youth Amava Oluntu serves. His sensitivity to the harsh injustices faced every day at every turn, keep us focused and motivated to create systemic change so that future generations don’t have to undergo the same traumas. He is on the board to keep us real, and also to learn the inner runnings of an organisation so that he can apply these to his own journey in the future.