2000 SAEP INTERNSHIP PROGRAMME

MZIWONKE MBONELI, was born and bred in the township of Guguletu, where he did his lower standards. Due to lack of space, his family moved for his high school years to Philippi, where he graduated from Sinethemba Senior Secondary School and participated extensively in SAEP's programmes at the school.  As an SAEP intern during 2000, he worded on the first year of a four-year B.Sc. in Information Technology at the University of Cape Town.  He says "I am the product of SAEP's activities at Sinethemba S.S. School, which is the high school where I graduated and, because SAEP understands the concept of continuity, after graduation I became an SAEP intern".  In addition to his university work, he accompanied interns from abroad to the areas where they are doing their community-based projects until they became familiar with the area.  He also conducted background research on the history of Philippi.

 Andrea Mazzarino was a Duke University senior from Old Tappan, New Jersey. She worked with a group of small business representatives, most of them women, from the Khulani Basebenzi Community Project in the Philippi Township. Khulani is an organization that trains the unemployed in job skills and provides childcare for working parents. Andrea’s project was to organize a group with these adults that will allow them to network, problem solve collectively for their businesses, and develop outreach programs with youth in the community. She and her group, named the Khulani Planning Group, interviewed families in Philippi in order to develop a community-based strategy for better waste management. They embodied this strategy by creating a drama that fosters dialogue between the group and the rest of the community. A major objective was to solidify different roles within the group and enable it to work continuously with the community on similar projects. Andrea "found SAEP’s many connections within the Philippi Township and outside helpful to her work. She has especially appreciated the help of Boyce Papu, SAEP’s managing director, in offering his insights into her project." Her work in Philippi has been "the most challenging learning experience she has ever had."  For a description of Andrea's work, including her reflections on her project, see Khulani Basebenzi Community Project.

Chris Friedel originally from a suburb of Chicago, United States, was an undergraduate at Stanford University in California where he was majoring in Earth Systems, a broad based interdisciplinary environmental science program that focuses on environmental processes and issues on regional to global scales. He was at SAEP for ten weeks, continuing previous research by Kavita Paul (see below) on the management of South Africa’s fishing industry. Library research and interviews with key personalities were the basis of his project. In attempting to synthesize the diverse opinions and perspectives, he came to learn just how much the nation’s complex socio-economic and political situation is linked to the conservation of natural resources and ecosystems.  Read the results of his research: Discussion Document - Post-apartheid fisheries management in South Africa: a local and global perspective.

Eva DuBuisson was entering her final year of undergraduate studies at Duke University, with a major in Public Policy Studies and a minor in English. At SAEP Eva worked with a group of students at Sinethemba Secondary School in Philippi on improving English and writing skills. She played the leading role in three projects: launching Sinethemba’s first school newspaper, starting a poetry and creative writing group, and developing Sinethemba’s English Debating Society. Through all of these, the students found new confidence in their English skills and in their ability to express themselves through the written word.  Her debating team went on the next year to win the national championships in Durban, and her young poets, who called themselves "The Next Philosophers," produced a small volume of poetry, "We are All Poets."

 

Grant Garrison was a rising senior at Duke University, in North Carolina USA. He was majoring in Public Policy Studies and hopes to do community-organizing work after graduation. This is actually Grant’s second time in Rondebosch, South Africa, as he studied Political Studies at the University of Cape Town for the Spring Semester (July-November) 1999. At SAEP he worked with Jeff Pierce, another Duke Intern, on a Community Based Assessment project involving several Grade 10 and 11 students at Sinethemba Senior Secondary School in Philippi.

HARSHA SETTY was a rising senior at Duke University where he was majoring in biomedical engineering and computer science. At SAEP Harsha was involved in developing a mathematics tutoring program at Sinethemba Senior Secondary School. He worked with students on projects ranging from mathematical modeling to complementing their learning with access to computers. In addition, he assisted in maintaining and rebuilding some of the personal computers at Sinethemba. Harsha felt it was a very rewarding experience to go through the internship program at SAEP. When joining SAEP, he had no initial expectations because he had little knowledge of what sustainable development really meant. He appreciates the independence granted in his working atmosphere because it allowed him to achieve more than what he expected during the 10 week stay at SAEP. He feels greatly that creativity, perseverance, and self-motivation are essential to succeeding in the internship program. He realised that his leadership skills and confidence improved dramatically as a result of coming to SAEP.  Read a diary that he wrote while he was with SAEP here.

Jeff Pierce was a rising senior at Duke University in North Carolina (USA), where he studies biology and religion. His post-graduate plans were unclear, but he may pursue work in sustainable development, along the lines of SAEP’s community-based efforts. After graduation from Duke, he received a Fulbright award to work in Swaziland.  Jeff was born in Walnut Creek, California (near Berkeley), where he still lives when not at school or abroad. The preceding spring he spent a semester in the Amazon region of Brazil, studying ecology, environmental science and policy, and sustainable development. Now came to South Africa to make practical that which he learned. While at SAEP he worked with Grant Garrison to facilitate a Community Based Assessment of environmental problems in Philippi township by a small group of students from Sinethemba Senior Secondary School.

RACHAEL HOWARD was a land economy student at Girton College, Cambridge University. She had just completed the first year of her studies. She worked with SAEP for eleven. Her course at the university is multi-disciplinary, covering law, economics, the environment and resource management, and she hopes to be able to apply these principles to real-life situations. Her work at SAEP involved updating SAEP’s information about the Coega development controversy in the Eastern Cape, to be included on the website . This was done through internet search and reading and summarising year 2000 newspaper articles related to Coega Development. The proposed deep water harbour and industrial development zone at Coega in the Eastern Cape has been ongoing for several years now. SAEP is keen to work on Coega this summer, since construction is due to begin in November. It is a concern to SAEP because at this late stage, a range of important issues have not been resolved.. Therefore, there is need for awareness to be raised about the longer term environmental impacts that would result if Coega continues with its developmental activities.  Rachael shall worked closely with Norton Tennille, the Executive Director of SAEP, to bring together and analyse information on Coega. Her experience at SAEP helped her gain an insight on many ‘land economy related issues’ in South Africa. She is very positive that her experience with SAEP will be complementary to her course of study at Cambridge, and thas given her a broader understanding of the development process in South Africa, and how controversial issues can be resolved.  After returning to Cambridge, Rachael wrote her senior thesis on land reform in South Africa, The Evolution of Land Reform Policy in South Africa, with a focus on Coega, and received a First for her dissertation and for her degree.

KAVITA PAUL was an intern at SAEP between February and June of 2000.  She graduated from U.C. Berkeley in spring of 1999 with a B.A. in Political Economy of Industrial Societies.  She writes: "I wanted to do research in the environmental field and I wanted to be abroad so SAEP seemed to fit perfectly."  Kavita researched the transformation of the fishing industry in South Africa subsequent to 1994.  Her research incorporated the scientific, socio-economic, and political perspectives of this very complicated situation.  Kavita's research is reported in Transformation of the Fishing Industry in the New South Africa.  Her evaluation of her time at SAEP: "My SAEP internship was by far one of the most rewarding and interesting experiences of my life.  And I'm not just saying that to be dramatic!"  She returned to law school in the USA and plans to do public interest law.