Ayesha Sooliman

Ayesha is a registered nursing sister, with a wealth of knowledge and experience in General, Community and Psychiatric Nursing, Midwifery, and emergency medicine. She also worked as a volunteer nurse, accompanying medical teams on local and international missions.

Currently, Ayesha works with South Africa’s relief organisation, Gift of the Givers (GOTG), a relationship that began 14 years ago, when she became a member of their rapid response team to the devastating earthquake in Pakistan, 2005. At present, she works primarily with the medical procurement team, liaising with companies wishing to make sizeable contributions of medical equipment and supplies to GOTG. Ayesha also assists GOTG’s logistics centre in Johannesburg with an effective stock control system, specifically for all medical equipment and supplies. Ayesha contributes to knowledge production within GOTG’s medical disaster response arm, by attending relevant international conferences. Ayesha has been the bursary coordinator for GOTG since 2010. Ayesha endeavours to make a positive change in the lives of impoverished people by continuing to innovate in the NPO space. Ayesha has developed relationships with a broad spectrum of corporates, medical professionals, and religious organisations. Through WCMA, Ayesha strives to build on these relationships and gain new ones in order to contribute to alleviating the plight of millions of poverty-stricken South Africans. 

  • Diploma in Nursing (General, Community, Psychiatry) & Midwifery
  • Bachelor of Nursing Advanced Practice (Nursing Education)
  • Bachelor of Nursing Honours (Nursing Management)

Chanchal Pather

Over a period of 19 years, Chanchal has gained invaluable experience in the areas of adult literacy; customer service, logistics and supply chain management; humanitarian aid procurement and logistics.

For the past 9 years, Chanchal has been a part of a dynamic team at Norsaf Marine. The company offers logistics and supply chain expertise, and humanitarian aid procurement to organisations. Their strategy for responding to humanitarian crises within Africa, enhances the capacity of relief agencies and business to respond to such crises, saves money, and prevents the duplication of efforts, by matching expressed needs with potential providers. Since its inception, Norsaf Marine has successfully completed humanitarian aid food projects for governments and NPOs:

***Mary’s Meals Scotland: a global movement providing food aid to the world’s poorest communities. Project: Procurement and seafreight into Somalia.

***South African Government/DIRCO: Project: Airfreight and seafreight of emergency food aid into Somalia.

***Gift of the Givers Foundation: Ongoing seafreight and airfreight projects into Somalia (Mogadishu) and Yemen (Aden and Hodeida).

Through a combination of the experiences gained from her career and academic trajectory, Chanchal attempts to find ways to contribute to poverty alleviation efforts. Her Masters dissertation, proposed a novel CSR model for major, local food retail chains, involving a basic food subsidisation scheme aimed at benefitting social grant recipient households. Being a pragmatist, Chanchal chooses to focus on practical goals that can be attained efficiently in order to improve the lives of people in incremental but significant ways.

  • BA (Industrial, Organisational, Labour Studies/Industrial Psychology; isiZulu)
  • BA Honours summa cum laude (English Studies)
  • MSocScience (Social Policy)
  • Pursuing a PhD in Social Policy as of 2019

Tammy Govender

Over a period of 14 years, Tammy developed a diverse skills’ set, in the fields of software development, operations (humanitarian aid logistics), and property development.

After graduating university, she started out as a software developer, producing innovative systems for the telecoms industry. In 2010, Tammy embarked on a new journey with Norsaf Marine (a humanitarian aid logistics solution provider), where she employed and further developed her skills in business operations management. Thereafter, she was presented with an opportunity to delve into property development. Tammy successfully ran a property development company building over 60 high end properties. Her last project diverted from property development and saw her going back to her roots.

The project culminated into a software system, ‘NGO Port.’ This system is testament to the impact Tammy’s work at Norsaf Marine had on her. Poverty alleviation is close to Tammy’s heart. She maintains that a major challenge to numerous NGOs is the sustainability of initiatives and campaigns. Like her partners, Tammy endeavours to make a positive and lasting change in the lives of impoverished communities by continuing to innovate in the NPO space, primarily through ‘NGO Port.’

  • BSc (Computer Science and Information Technology),
  • BSc Honours (Computer Science)