A familiar face becomes a new colleague

Kouga Dam (SA) – Living Lands is delighted to be able to welcome Odilirwe Selomane (‘Odi’) as a new colleague to the PRESENCE Learning Village. Odi’s role will focus on the design of economic and policy research strategies for the future implementation of regional landscape conservation and restoration incentive schemes (also known as ‘payments for ecosystem/landscape services’ or ‘stewardship agreements’).

But Odi is no stranger to the Baviaanskloof area. Last year, he joined the Living Lands team for eight spent weeks during his student MSc internship with the Dutch Agricultural Economics Institute (WUR-LEI). In joining Living Lands, we asked Odi to tell us a bit more about his background and motivations for joining the team:

Odi: “During my Bachelors degree at the University of Limpopo (in northern South Africa), one of my main motivations for wanting to finish my degree as soon as I could was to get a job and start weathering into city life and all that comes with it. This idea stayed in my head until I was about a month shy of completing my degree. Things changed. And after a rather ‘not-so-easy’ battle, I won a scholarship to study in Wageningen University (The Netherlands), which brought about a whole new dynamic to my future plans. Towards the end of my studies, I started looking for something inspiring, and different.”

“While doing an internship with LEI, an Agricultural economics institute in The Netherlands, looking at water productivity in the Inkomati basin in northern South Africa, plans changed and I ‘accidentally’ ended up at the Kouga Dam with Living Lands – still looking at water productivity but this time in the Kouga catchment. At the time, I was only here for eight weeks doing my internship, and I had no idea that I would be coming back to actually work with the organization, although I thought it was very inspiring and full of energy here. From that moment on, I thought it would actually be great to come back. I enclosed the word ‘accidentally’ in the inverted commas because the accident turned out to be one of the greatest opportunities, not only to work in a great environment, but also to work and meet with great people. And here I am – the excitement grows by day!”

Living Lands shares Odi’s excitement and looks forward to his having his dedicated work ethic, sharp intellect and warm easy-going personality to strengthen the team.

Living Lands is a registered South African not-for-profit foundation and is secretariat to the PRESENCE restoration learning network. Living Lands is the ‘institutional home’ for EarthCollective activities and positive ideas in South Africa. Both PRESENCE and Living Lands are initiatives of the EarthCollective network.