Empowering Communities And Breaking The Cycle Of Abuse.

Vusi Ngcobo is a seasoned leader who is certified as Director by Sirdar and IODSA. He holds a master’s degree in international law and has experience in general management, Business Strategy development, Programme management, people management. Stake holder management and Corporate Governance. He has served in various government organizations at various levels and was a Diplomat to China and South Asia Pacific between 2012 and 2016 stationed in Beijing.

Njabulo Mchunu, holds a Bachelor of Commerce Honours in Accounting from University of Kwa-Zulu Natal and is a Chartered accountant (South Africa).His recent experience positions as the Chief Financial Officer at Tshwane North TVET College, KZN Department of Community Safety and Liaison and UMgungundlovu District Municipality. Njabulo has vast experience in finance, governance, and auditing and currently serves in Audit Committees of, Ingwe TVET College (Chairperson), Umsinga Local Municipality and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (Chairperson).

Yvonne has a Master of Industrial relations from the University of Sydney and an MBA from the University of Canberra while in exile in Australia. Since returning to South Africa in 1994, she has established a career at C- suite level in two of South Africa’s leading private healthcare organisations, Medscheme and Life Healthcare. In addition to executing her responsibilities in Branding, Communication and Transformation in these two organisations, she has leveraged her executive positions to transform organisational employment practices to represent the country’s demographics and to embrace broad-based black economic empowerment. She also drove both organisations’ corporate social investment programmes and expenditures to benefit disadvantaged communities by focussing on health and education.

Zarina is a specialist Employment law practitioner with experience in labour law for 22 years. She commenced with the employment law consultancy in 2000-2002 and thereafter registered the firm Zarina Walele Attorneys. Zarina Walele was admitted as an attorney of the Cape High Court on 02 November 1987. She practiced as an attorney between 1985-1989 in Cape Town with the firm Ntlupheko James Yekiso & Associates, the only African firm of attorneys in Cape Town established in the 80’s. She holds the following qualifications:

BA LLB (1979 – 1984) (UWC); Advanced Diploma Labour Law (1997) – RAU; Certificate Programme Industrial Relations (1998) – Wits Business School; Diploma in Alternative Dispute Resolution (Cum Laude) (2000) – University of Pretoria.

Applying a value-driven approach (quantitative or qualitative) to Portfolios, Programmes and Projects to ensure the organisational strategy is enhanced, balancing knowledge and experience of Portfolio Management, Programme Management and Project Management to quickly determine the problem to be solved, the appropriate approach and apply the right delivery model; waterfall, agile or hybrid, leveraging experience of working in many different countries with diverse cultures, languages and across time zones to enable and empower the programme or project teams and apply the skills learnt managing these diverse projects to harness the benefits of diversity inherent in project teams. He is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Agile Project Manager Practitioner and Scrum Master

Karlien helps SMEs with transformation initiatives, re-engineering of processes and organisational efficiency, highlighting the fact that people are the common denominator in successful operational, project or strategic initiatives. She holds the following qualifications:

Professional Business Coaching (International Certification), B Com Honours (UNISA, 2010)

(Industrial and Organisational Psychology), (UNISA, 2010) (Industrial Psychology

Dr Nobs is a medical practitioner whose dreams and aspirations cannot be contained within the confines of a hospital or clinic. She was born and raised in the Eastern Cape. She strives for excellence in all areas of her life. She established Zamokuhle Child Centre, in 1995, a first community-based child abuse clinic in Soweto, and later co-founded COPESSA in 2000. Through COPESSA she aims to holistically address the root causes of this social ill, and Gender-based Violence in general. Dr Nobs holds a Medical degree and two Master degrees in Science and Public Health, all from the University of Witwatersrand; Advanced Management Programme (Manchester University) and Certificate in Child Law (University of Pretoria). She was inducted as an Ashoka Fellow in 2014 and is also a fellow of the African Leadership Institute. She serves on the MTN Foundation Board.

Kelebogile started her journey with COPESSA as a student Social Worker and later returned to volunteer as a qualified Social Worker as she greatly believed in the vision and mission of COPESSA. She now serves as the Social Worker working with adults in the work of preventing Gender Based Violence, driving awareness and providing responsive services including counselling to victims of violence.  She also is responsible for our food parcel/ donations distributions ensuring that donations reach those in need with empathy and dignity.

Busisiwe’s love for making a difference in her community is what led her to COPESSA joining the team as a volunteer in 2008. She was part of a group of volunteers who received Lay Counselling training through CATTS (Child Abuse Treatment and Training Services offered by Joburg Child Welfare, and later an opportunity to do a course in Social Auxiliary Work.

She currently fulfils the role of the Social Auxiliary Worker under the supervision of the Social Workers and supervises the Youth volunteers.  Not one to shy away from learning she is currently undergoing training for embroidery and digitizing in order as part of improving this income-generation initiative.