Three finalists in each of the five categories of the 2011 Shoprite Checkers Women of the Year Award were announced today (Wednesday, 13 July 2011) in Johannesburg.
The achievements of the finalists are wide ranging and show determination and foresight to make an impact on the future of fellow South Africans. These exceptional and visionary women have been selected from hundreds of entries.
Their work is currently profiled in the media with the public being invited to vote for the women who they believe to be the most deserving of winning in the Award. The public vote will account for 30% of the final score although the judges’ decision will be final.
The finalists are:
SOCIO-ECONOMIC BUSINESS DEVELOPERS CATEGORY
It was living in extreme poverty after the tragic death of her husband that motivated Ms Phumzile Sihlangu to look at the barren land she inherited and make a decision to start farming. Today her farm yields a thousand butternuts on each hectare which she supplies in her area to the big supermarket chains in the country. The 37-year-old Ms Sihlangu has been farming since 2008 on a 8 hectare piece of land in Mkhuhlu in the Hazyview district in Mpumalanga Province. Her main farming activity is to produce butternut but at the moment she is also growing tomatoes and cabbage. The cabbage she is growing commercially to feed orphans after Government gave her seedlings to plant.
Having learned the key success principles of farming she started planting one hectare and grew that steadily. As she does not foresee any unmanageable challenges, her growth plan is to plant the entire 21 hectares of land.
It is her vision to also turn to farms which through the Land Restitution Legislation were transferred to black ownership and now stand unused. It is her plan to rent these farmlands to satisfy the demand of her existing markets.
Ms Shona McDonald built a business from nothing into a multi-million enterprise which has received numerous national and international awards for the impact it has had on the lives of people with disabilities in South Africa, enabling them to take their rightful place as part of society. This visionary businesswoman manufactured her first South African appropriate modular posture support buggy nearly 20 years ago to improve the quality of life of children living with severe disabilities and then went on to build a successful business around it.
It happened when Ms McDonald recognised a need for appropriate wheelchairs when she was struggling to find solutions for her daughter, Shelly, who was born with cerebral palsy. Shelly was unable to attend school and was at constant risk of developing life threatening postural deformities and secondary health complications.
From that first chair, she has built Shonaquip into the company it is today, recognised as a qualified Enterprise Development Beneficiary with a BBBEE level 2 rating, employing 62 people of whom 10 people are disabled and 30 are women.
Ms Juliet Newton is a businesswoman, entrepreneur and passionate South African. She founded learning and development company, Avocado Vision, in 1996 and has built it up into a business with a turnover of in excess of R12 million with a 29-strong team and an impressive list of corporate clients. Following the success of her first company Ms Newton went on to more recently start a consumer education company Footprint. In this company high-volume and low-skill peer educators are deployed nationally targeting the large number of people within the lower income and low-skill groups.
This would include the 13 million unbanked or poorly banked people who use risky informal products that not only affect the individual and their families, but the economy as a whole.
In the past 24 months Footprint has created 25 micro-enterprises through which 40 000 people have been trained in financial literacy skills. Of these micro enterprises 80% are owned by women.
GOOD NEIGHBOURS AGAINST CRIME CATEGORY
Under the leadership of Ms Tarisai Mchuchu-Ratshidi the international organisation, Young In Prison (YIP) has grown from strength to strength in Cape Town helping young people, move away from lives of crime and become successful and contributing members of society. The main aim of Ms Mchuchu-Ratshidi’s work is to empower young people to make the right choices and stop living a life of crime. Young In Prison has a huge drive to help young offenders turn towards a fulfilling life for themselves, their families, their communities and in turn for the country itself. The focus is on opportunities for these young people to be successfully rehabilitated and reintegrated.
Since Ms Mchuchu-Ratshidi has taken the reigns at Young in Prison in 2008 she has done a lot of work on advocacy to make changes to the juvenile justice system. She believes it very important to change the mind-set of the community at large to shift thinking from punitive towards restorative justice.
In her opinion prisons are universities of crime for children and young people. It should only be used as a last resort for those who are a danger to themselves or others. She is working hard to get the community to think deeper about why a child steals. Her belief is that it is because he or she has not been taught any better as people are not born evil, it is circumstances that drive them to commit evil deeds.
Ms Lucinda Collette Evans is the Founder Member and Director of PhilisaAbafaziBethu --- Heal Our Women which is a development programme aiming to give vital support to women and children who are victims of sexual and domestic violence in the greater Lavender Hill community, 30 km from Cape Town on the Cape Flats. As a trusted, brave and well-known member of this troubled society where 60% of the 40 000 people are unemployed,Ms Evans started PhilisaAbafaziBethu to create a safe haven for victims of crime and a place to educate women about their rights, provide counseling, court support and help women to get protection orders against their perpetrators.
She has risked her own life on many occasions travelling through drug gang wars to council victims by walking single-handedly into the biggest drug gang leader’s house and past his guards to tell him that she won’t be intimidated. Ms Evans has showed the same courage in fending for her community when they have marched illegally to protest against violence or the lack of service delivery.
In her current operation Ms Evans has a considerable number of women and girls, all victims of sexual and domestic violence, under protection moving through her 4 bed safe house. It is manned by community women volunteers who are available to these victims within 30 min from the time the call is received at the safe house from the police.
Dr Nobulembu Babalwa Mwanda is a medical doctor and a pioneer in the field of prevention and holistic management of child abuse, a deep-rooted problem that is under reported in South African society. Having seen the devastating effects of child sexual abuse and the severe lack of resources and skills to deal with this difficult medical and social problem, Dr Mwanda decided to look at ways to prevent the scourge in the first instance but also to provide medical assessments and social support for the victims as well as their families.
She came to the conclusion that victims and related family members as well as perpetrators must be developed as individuals with a contribution to society. They must be given social skills, a sense of worth and the capacity to elevate themselves from impoverishment and helplessness before they get caught up in a cycle of abuse.
In 2000 Dr Mwanda established a not-for profit organisation, Zamokuhle Community Upliftment Programmes, later called COPESSA (Community-based Prevention and Empowerment Strategies in South Africa), primarily to prevent child abuse and neglect through community development and capacity building within a local community.
EDUCATORS CATEGORY
Dr Tina Cowley has devoted the past 25 years of her life to national and international research methods and techniques to teach people with learning disabilities how to overcome this, contributing largely to improved reading and education in South Africa. She has built her intensive research into a successful business model in which students with learning disabilities are successfully taught how to read through a network of 101 franchised enterprises in urban and rural areas throughout the country. Of the franchisees 94% are women.
Today The Tina Cowley Reading Centres assist close on 20 000 students including children with reading disabilities, illiterate adults, pre-school gifted children and handicapped people who have been tested as not educable to obtain reading and writing skills which they have been deprived of previously. It now empowers them to join a productive workforce.
Dr Cowley developed her system after 7 years of research which she combined into unique teaching methods. It is based on the principle that a learning problem is also a reading problem. She tested it at a primary school in her hometown of Witbank to establish how the system improves the reading and ultimately learning ability of learners from Grade 1 to 7.
Ms Ednah Zulu, the first principal of the Ngqengelele High School in a small village, Mahlabathini in deep rural KwaZulu Natal is a courageous woman who took up a challenge to transform a one classroom teaching facility into a high school that is awarded year after year for its matric pass rate and excellence. She upgraded the teaching facility from having one classroom, one grade and no toilets to a school that now has 10 classrooms, proper toilet facilities and an administration block. But most importantly this school has been able to achieve outstanding results in the national matric examinations with an overall pass rate that varies between 70% and 80%.
Situated deep into the heartland of southern rural KwaZulu Natal Ngqengelele High School has 317 pupils and through the intervention of Ms Zulu, the parents of the children of this school have all become involved in their children’s education to better their future.
The school is situated in a deeply impoverished area where the hope for a better life can quickly diminish given the odds against it. Ms Zulu herself was a slow starter at school and at first found it hard but she persevered and went on to love teaching others. She even taught her mother to speak Afrikaans.
Ms Zulu is an example of how a headmistress should conduct and run a school for the future success of South Africa.
Prof Phindile Lukhele-Olorunju is an internationally respected agriculture researcher, academic and scientist who continuously breaks boundaries in seeking, developing and transferring knowledge in the educational, agricultural and research arena both locally and internationally. Over many years her work in the agricultural arena has contributed largely to African farmers advancing themselves to apply modern and well-researched techniques and also to encourage education in this field which is frequently perceived to be an unskilled profession dominated by men.
The focus of her work has been to teach, motivate and work hands-on in training South African and African farmers to develop better means of producing food in their individual communities. Her research work has supported them with techniques to grow their crops scientifically.
Over the years Prof Lukhele-Olorunju has innovated cheaper and healthier varieties of produce that do not have to be imported from other countries but instead could be exported to improve the South African economy and alleviate poverty. Neglected crops such as cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) bambara groundnut (Vigna subtarrania), cassava and open pollinated maize should be promoted for production in South Africa.
YOUTH MOVERS CATEGORY
Rev Karen Tewson, a professional nurse and ordained minister, has for the past 23 years championed the rights of women, children and sometimes men who are victims of rape, incest and domestic violence and experience systematic disregard for the trauma they suffered. Her work has and continue to contribute to a better life for these victims of physical and emotional abuse in South Africa where there are over 7 800 victims a month, of whom more than 2 000 are children.
Following an important Human Rights hearing held in 2010 in the Constitutional Court Rev Tewson set out single-handedly to resolve the very complex problem concerning the difficulties associated with giving of evidence in court by minor children, many of whom are pre-school children.
She established The Court Preparation Programme, called Ke Bona Lesedi (I see the light), which impressed the legal fraternity so much that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) sanctioned and adopted it. Now Court Preparation Officials are trained to help victims of rape and abuse to tell their stories in a way that can be used as viable evidence to convict their abusers.
At the young age of 23 Ms Joy Olivier, then a researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council, looked at the mathematics and science pass rate of black matriculants and felt it was so shocking that something had to be done. She and a fellow researcher Makhosi Gogwana decided to do something about it and IkamvaYouth, a township-based volunteer programme by-youth, for-youth non-profit organisation was born.
Today IkamvaYouth drives social change in South Africa by enabling disadvantaged youth to pull themselves and others at low-cost out of poverty and into university and employment. Ms Olivier has since also established the Western Cape branch of another non-profit organisation TEACH South Africa, that places top graduates from fields other than education in two-year posts as educators in township schools.
In 2003 Ms Olivier and Ms Gogwana set off with youthful abandon without drawing up a plan of any kind to start IkamvaYouth. They just send out e-mails to all their friends asking “who would want to teach kids at “Makhosi’s” old school?” An overwhelming yes was the start of a programme which have had a real impact on matric results and enrolment of black pupils to tertiary education in South Africa.
Founder of the Baphumelele Education Centre and Children’s Home in Khayelitsha one of South Africa’s most marginalised and poverty-stricken township in South Africa, Ms Rosalia Mashale or better known as Mama Rosie cares for hundreds of abandoned and orphaned children from infants to 18-year-olds and takes care of teenagers infected with HIV/Aids. Baphumelele the Xhosa word for “progress” says exactly what has happened since this primary school teacher moved to Khayelitsha in 1985. Her life was however changed forever when an abandoned infant was left on her doorstep one morning.
She took the baby in and with the backing of local women and the little funds she had available began looking after children who have been abandoned. In 20 years Ms Mashale’s work has grown from a shelter for a couple of children to a well-run organisation caring for orphans, homeless children and young people living with HIV/Aids.
Through her work where she had created employment for 135 people from different races Ms Mashale has highlighted the day to day issues that plague the poor in South Africa. She has taken in vulnerable children that have been sexually abused, raped and are infected with HIV / AIDS.
Ms Mashale has overcome many obstacles over the years but always had the ability
to deal with heart-breaking situations in a positive and caring way. She addresses desperate needs in her community with foresight, vision and always a focus on leading the community to solve their own problems. She has also managed to get people from the wider community involved to give the children of Khayelitsha a better future.
HEALTH CARE-GIVERS CATEGORY
Ms Nomasango Xabanisa is the founder and director of Sibongile -- Thank You in Xhosa, a non-profit organisation that cares for children with disabilities in Khayelitsha on the outskirts of Cape Town. Not only does she care for children with disabilities but she is at the forefront of providing holistic care and is a force of enlightenment in a community riddled with superstition showing them the way forward to cherish those least able to care for themselves.
At Sibongile, named after Ms Xabanisa’s daughter, children with disabilities are made to feel loved and they receive excellent physical, emotional, mental and spiritual care. Children who come to Sibongile have their life expectancy and quality of life greatly increased.
It all started with her personal loss and great love for her daughter Sibongile, who sadly suffered from Cerebral Palsy and died at the young age of 15 in 2005. When her daughter died Ms Xabanisa made a promise to her on her deathbed that she would care for children with disabilities.
Sibongile currently consists of four containers, which shelters the Sibongile Daycare Centre. Both houses accommodate 12 children and are open 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. The Day Care Centre has 6 children and is open weekly from 08h00 to 15h30. There are currently 33 children from 1-14 years, all severely disabled and some are HIV positive.
Sister Ethel Normoyle, the founder of the Missionvale Care Centres outside Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, is a role model and leader who have earned South African icon status for the inspirational work she has done to help alleviate poverty with infectious compassion. She has defied all odds since she decided 23 years ago to single-handedly set out to do something about the cycle of despair of the people of Missionvale who lived in tin shacks with no service delivery or proper sanitation, no running water and a constant infestation of flies and stench in temperatures that range between 28 to 32 degrees for the majority of the year. Approximately 60% of the population in Missionvale has HIV and AIDS.
Sister Ethel started it all in 1988 by walking 45 minutes every day from her house to the township with her biggest obstacle to win the trust of the people. Her first breakthrough was when a woman in the township, Diane offered her the shade of a tree growing outside her home. She started her mission by teaching children to read and write, sheltered during the rain and with the comfort of shade in the warm African sun.
After 23 years of service and extensive fundraising Missionvale and Missionvale Care Centres are now shining examples of how a single person can impact on the future of the country.
Dr Elmi Muller is a pioneer in the medical field, who with her transplant team, were the first in the world to transplant a kidney from a HIV-positive donor to a HIV-positive recipient. She carried out this historic transplant in October 2008 and has since performed nine similar procedures. Dr Muller who is based in the University of Cape Town’s Department of Surgery is a full-time surgeon at Groote Schuur Hospital. She initiated the HIV positive-to-positive transplantation project and is continuing to drive this. The first results of the surgery were published in one of the most prestigious and high-impact journals in the medical field, the New England Journal of Medicine.
The work of Dr Muller and her team continue to push boundaries in South Africa and the rest of the world. There is also much acknowledgment for their work and international renal-units now want to follow in her footsteps. HIV positive donors are now considered for the first time in the USA.
She is determined to continue her work to better the lives of all the patients with end-stage renal failure who are currently awaiting transplantation in South Africa. Dr Muller also has a strong interest in teaching and believes the future lies in the hands of our current medical students. It is for this reason that she enjoys being part of the undergraduate teaching programme in Surgery at the University of Cape Town.
Through this Award the Shoprite Group wants to focus the attention of South Africans on finding solutions for those critical areas affecting the future of the country.
The winners will be awarded with individual prize money while the group will also give R100 000 towards the work these winners to impact positively on the future of the country.
The Award culminates in a spectacular gala evening in July 2011 at Emperors Palace in Gauteng to announce the winners. This dazzling event will be broadcast during prime time on Monday, 8 August 2011 on M-Net. The programme will be re-broadcast on National Women’s Day, 09 August 2011.