Our Trustees
A bit more about the people behind our NPO

Dephney Mhaule
Board Chairperson; Director of Sibonile Daycare Center
Dephney Mhaule is the former Principal of Funjwa Primary School and currently the director of Sibonile Daycare Center, an NPO supporting young girls and mothers who want to work. Dephney is a visionary and exceptional community leader in Acornhoek, known for changing many peoples’ lives. Responsible for turning the dilapidated Funjwa Primary School (nicknamed “gwagwavuka”, meaning “broken down”) into a model primary school with additional buildings, a library, computers and vegetable garden, she is currently building Sibonile Daycare to successfully offer Grade R as of January 2018, and Grade 1 as of 2019. Dephney has also developed a large scale community garden on the Orpen Road and mentors a variety of young people in the community.

Jane Burt
Trustee and Director of realife learning
Dr Jane Burt is the Director of realife learning and a founding member of Valuing International Activists Stories (VIAS). Jane sees herself traversing edges and boundaries to bring diverse people and organisations and, more than human beings, closer together. She uses change-oriented processes and approaches to learn, shift, refocus, relook, research, review, evaluate, and transform (sometimes transgress). This is why she is committed to Zingela Ulwazi as one of the few organisations that dances this dance – with its roots in the ground and its ambitious and luscious branches reaching up to the sky. It is an organisational manifestation of what it means to live a real life.

Nikki Raw
Trustee & Development Manager for The Saville Foundation
Nikki Raw is the Development Manager for The Saville Foundation, a private foundation committed to facilitating meaningful social change and building resilience within communities and individuals through education and entrepreneurship. Nikki holds a degree in Social Science and an honours diploma in marketing and advertising. She has been building capacity with individuals and schools for 7 years and manages a number of entrepreneurial related competitions and projects within South Africa.

Stella Horgan
Trustee & Director
Stella Horgan (BA, Dip. Higher Education (UCT), Dip. Counseling & Human Services (U.La Trobe), Dip. Social Enterprise, (SSE)) is the Founder and Director of NPO Zingela Ulwazi. In 2012 she returned home to South Africa after 12 years in Australia where she had a private practice specialising in individual and group psychotherapy (Registered ACA 6252). Stella has a background in workshop design, facilitation and training, leadership and personal development, coaching, project management and film and television production. A year after being back in South Africa she launched Zingela Ulwazi. She works closely with communities neighbouring wilderness spaces; launched and co-ordinated the Acornhoek Leadership Forum (ALF) and brought together 130 rural organisations to participate in AWARD’s Civil Society Support Initiative. Stella is a Senior Facilitator of the Hoffman Process (UK) and a board member of Australian wildlife advocacy group For the Love of Wildlife. Her meditation and artistic practice inform her engagement with life. Stella considers her main mission to find ways to rebalance human life with nature in an effort to create a regenerative way of living where all may thrive.

Nomsa Thibela
Trustee & Principal of Ntsoelemolodi Primary School

Susan Howie
Trustee