Natalie Codd - Women's Project

Natalie is heading up the womens development project at Masakhane and is very excited about working with this team of ambitious women and men towards earning a decent income with the new skills she will be offering the group.
Having spent many years in the world of performing arts she has had opportunities to make clothing and props for theatre shows, extravaganzas and magical performances. Natalie has worked extensively with street children in both Durban and Cape Town and has been very pro-active in community development from Transkei to Swaziland, even developing drives with groups like “Clean Slate” to play an active role in cleaning up and recycling. Her experience and training includes make-up, special effects, film and photography; and she is only too keen to share this all with the Masakhane group.
Natalie has a 9 year old daughter who keeps her young at heart and has a deep spiritual connection with Magaliesburg and is driven to see the area uplifted.

Sam Savage

Sam Savage is a registered social worker with the added benefit of a degree in drama. She first became interested in community development work when stationed in Zambia working with Aids orphans under the auspices of CINDI (Children in Distress). Frustration at a lack of services and basic information lead her to change her life course from that of pure actor and musician, to that of social worker.

Sam has been involved with the Village Power projects since February 2009. Her duties include HIV/Aids education, service access such as ID's and pensions, trauma and general counselling and most importantly; "bottoms up" community development.

This form of community development has a strong theoretical base, and has been proven to be one of the very few sustainable forms of community development. A process of self-help, and self-governance is facilitated and the community and it's members develop a level of self awareness and motivation that will eventually render the help of the social worker unnecessary. Community members plan, implement and evaluate their own projects.

Both Sonia and I strongly feel that our role is one of facilitation as opposed to the dependence that can easily result from careless intervention.

At Village Power we believe in release, as opposed to relief. As Bob Marley once said:"None but ourselves can free our minds

Profile: Sonja van der Vyver

Sonja van der Vyver works as Development Practitioner and Educational Facilitator on The Masakhane Project (see link in sidebar for more info). Sonja is passionate about education and will be entering her Master's studies in education at the University of Johannesburg next year.

Sonja has been involved in the Masakhane project since 2007 and has facilitated interventions such as the Facilitation of Community Coherence, Water Provision, Life Skills Training, the establishement of a creche at Masakhane, etc. Her duties include the following:


Resource Manager
Fund Raiser
Researcher
Public Liason Officer
Education Facilitator


Sonja enjoys coordinating the different aspects of the Masakhane Project, and loves the challenge of allocating and aligning the available resources from Corporate Donor-funders and other donors to the needs of the community and the Village Power team.

Sonja is married to a Nature Conservationist and has three of her children living with them on a farm in the Magaliesburg Mountains.