Kouga Dam (SA): Living Lands is delighted to be able to welcome three more colleagues to the PRESENCE Learning Village.  Bart van Eck, Noël Isaacs and Silvia Weel joined the team last week and will be involved in various activities which strengthen Living Lands’ aim of supporting local capacity building for landscape restoration.

Noël Isaacs is already well-known to his Living Lands colleagues. During the past two years, Noël has assisted numerous PRESENCE students in the Baviaanskloof in providing local knowledge as well as helping with Afrikaans translation when students engaged with community.  Alongside his previous job, Noël invested much time and energy in establishing the tourist hiking trail at Sewefontein with fellow community members. His drive and passion for nature in the Baviaanskloof naturally caught the attention of Living Lands and the team is excited about having the chance to learn much from Noël’s local knowledge.  “Since I came from PE (Port Elizabeth) back to the Baviaanskloof…for me…I am in a paradise now, in heaven,” explains Noël.  “For me, it is better for me to stay in the Baviaanskloof…because it is a beautiful place. There are a few things which make it special – nature and the people in the Baviaanskloof are more free, they feel safe and actually live longer than people in the cities. And that’s why I prefer to stay here.

– I love the plants,  beautiful birds and everything around here in the environment and that’s why I said to myself I must learn these things. That was also at the time when I didn’t have a job.”

Over the years, Noël has taken every opportunity join other more knowledgeable locals (such as his cousin) into the field and learn about the nature, e.g. about how to identify and track various wildlife.  “For me, I love nature, I love the Baviaanskloof…so I must follow their footsteps. I don’t want to do any funny stuff and keep all the information to myself. From what I know and have experienced, I actually feel I want to share it  with the community so we can all take care of nature and come back with beautiful ideas to make their own business.”  Noël has been interested in working with Living Lands for some time. He recalls, “The first time I was working with students that came from the PRESENCE Learning Village into the Baviaanskloof [Noël first assisted student research in 2007 as a translator], you see, I noticed to myself, “No man, this work that they are doing is very interesting because it is about nature and it is about learning about the people in the environment”. And I thought that I like what you are doing and would actually like to help you guys with what you are doing because it is about nature education and to try to  bring nature back in the ‘kloof and it’s about letting people know about nature and letting people take care of nature….And you make use of your ideas and turn it into something which is actually valuable for people. Ja, that’s why….”

Living Lands looks forward to being able to support Noël’s own motivation for learning and to assist in realising his ambitions for nature and tourism in the Baviaanskloof. Noël’s initial role with Living Lands will be as manager of the PRESENCE Learning Village with complementary activities in restoration monitoring in the Baviaanskloof and eyes4earth youth education.

Like most of his Living Lands colleagues, Bart van Eck has his educational roots in Wageningen University where he studied aquatic ecology and water quality management. Bart brings a wealth of new experience to the team with a strong background in water sanitation, environmental technology and sustainability innovation. Bart also spent one year in Portugal looking at the effects of non-native crayfish on local rice fields. Since graduating in 2004, Bart has worked for the Delfland Water Board in facilitating multi-stakeholder cooperation and ‘people processes’ for building consensus and a shared vision.  Bart’s motivation for uprooting his Dutch life and coming to South Africa is driven by his desire to work in an international environment. But it is more than that:  “I have always been frustrated at seeing how millions of euros are invested in (e.g. sanitation in) The Netherlands leading to only an improvement of 1-2% but if the same funds were invested in Africa you could give an entire community or even country a complete working system,” says Bart. “So I feel my knowledge could be better used here.”  Bart believes that providing a community with better health services can be a catalyst for other things. “You can then create a change of mindset which will also profit the environment.”  Bart’s primary role with Living Lands is to act as research coordinator for the PRESENCE Learning Network.

Last but not least, Silvia Weel – one of Living Lands’ and EarthCollective’s founding members – has returned after taking six months out to pursue a job opportunity in Brazil.  This time away was a valuable learning experience for Silvia and, amongst other activities, she had an opportunity to understand the dynamics of deforestation in the Amazon Forest first-hand as well as getting the chance to present the case for REDD (avoided deforestation) at  the Copenhagen Climate Summit last  December. Whilst Silvia’s former role with Living Lands was as geo-spatial analyst (with a focus on remote sensing), Silvia’s focus will now be oriented more toward wildlife management and conservation in close cooperation with local partners. “My time away was valuable and I learnt many new things including that the working environment here with Living Lands is special and something I am very grateful to again be a part of.”

With such diverse backgrounds, Living Lands is excited about having Noël, Bart and Silvia’s motivation and experience to strengthen our collaborative efforts.

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.