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Wednesday, 11 August 2010

Recent Board of Trustees Meeting and Changes in Our Organization

Board News:

On Saturday the 17th of July we had our annual Board of Trustees Meeting with the entire board in attendance. We spent the day reviewing the year as well as approving the organizations budgets and new Trustees were added onto the Board. Alan Velcich has joined us, a very experienced NGO and non-profit auditor from Johannesburg, and Mpumi Fundam, one of the Programme Heads of the Eastern Cape Development Programme who has been associated to us via the art programme for many years. Thabang Meslane will also be joining us on the Board in his new capacity as Director—see below. We are grateful for their willingness to serve on our Board.

Mrs. Mei, one of the founding members of the board of Trustees, a local business woman, and a long-time advocate of the Trust’s work, has asked to be retired from the board and we thank her sincerely for her many years of support.

Remaining on the Board is John Kincaid, Paul Roux, Andrew Hofmeyr, Novuyani Peyi, Annette Woudstra and Carol Hofmeyr who was elected Chair.


Carol’s New Role:

At the board of Trustees meeting Carol announced that she would be stepping down as a Director of the Trust. Carol began her work in Hamburg 10 years ago and founded the Trust in 2005. Her work-load has been enormous as the driver and creative force behind all of the craft work and all the major artworks the art project has create-- most recently the Guernica-- as well as the sole doctor in huge rural area with many urgent and unrelenting health needs.

She will of course remain very involved in the art project, and our most valuable advisor in terms of our health programme. She is also Chair of the Board.

Carol is taking a 6 month break from her clinic work as well and then will re-evaluate her role after that time.

As a trust we would like to partner with the government to recruit another doctor to this area. We are also in the process of interviewing nurses to work both with our village health workers and in our hospice inpatient unit.


New Director:

Thabang Meslane has been asked to join Annette as a Director. He has been working in various capacities over the past year, and increasingly called on to be involved in day-to-day operations management as Annette has had to be away in Canada for half of the year. This process had begun several months ago when Thabang accepted the role as Operations Manager. He has been doing an excellent job and has agreed to co-direct with Annette. This will ensure continuity of leadership in her absences and further free Carol to pursue other interests.


Their roles and responsibilities are as follows:

Annette: Trust Director

Donor Liaison
Reporting and Fundraising
Programme Development
Financial Planning
Maintaining Vision/Mission of Trust
Communications

Thabang: Managing Director

Responsible for daily operations management
Implementation of budget
Human Resources Head
Policy and procedures implementation
Chair Trust Management Team meetings
Volunteers