About Zeri South Africa
ZERI Southern Africa (ZERI-SA) was officially established on the 29th January 2004 as a voluntary agency. It is in the process of being registered as a non profit organization. The ZERI Foundation International (ZFI) provides the guiding principles for the scope of activities of ZERI-SA.
The ZFI has given written permission to ZERI-SA to use its logo and to access its documentation, experience and network on the basis of agreed by-laws by both parties.
ZERI Southern Africa is set up with the objective of responding to the needs of people with what they have, in co-evolution with nature. The people’s needs are defined as water, food, housing, health care, shelter, energy, jobs and education. These needs are to be met in an enabling and affirming environment that optimizes the potential of the people, as well as their living environment, in the most sustainable manner.
In order to achieve these objectives in Southern Africa, ZERI-SA plans to:
- (a) establish a ZERI network of scholars, practitioners and trainers;
- (b) promote research and development in the areas pertinent to these objectives;
- (c) create training programs to design and implement innovative and effective
production and consumption models making best use of the locally available human and natural resources;- (d) interact with educational institutions to implement ZERI educational initiatives
reaching out to children, youth, adults and professionals;- (e) network with partners to design and /or implement ZERI inspired or ZERI led
projects;
- (f) adapt, publish and distribute materials and literature to support ZERI-inspired
projects in Southern Africa;- (g) facilitate local, regional and international exchange of scientific insights, technical
expertise and other practical and learning exchanges;- (h) accredit organizations and persons in Southern Africa so as to formally recognize
them as part of the ZERI network under an agreement with the ZFI.Background of Nirmala Nair, founder director of ZERI-SA
Nirmala Nair has been involved in sustainable development initiatives for the last 25 years. She has worked with community based activist groups, NGOS, international aid agencies, funding agencies, academic research institutions and Universities between India, Netherlands and South Africa.
Born in Kerala, raised in Kashmir and New Delhi, she was home schooled by her mother until the age of 10. She considers the roots of her passion for sustainable development lie in being raised in a simple but sustainable life style, free of formal factory schooling, which so easily thwarts creative, innovative potential.
She has a Masters Degree in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a Masters Degree in Development Studies specializing in Women and Development from the Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands.
She has been living in Cape Town since 1992 with her South African husband, Philip van Ryneveld, and three daughters, seeking to build meaningful, ‘sustainable development’ in a modern context.
She strongly believes that any sustainable development initiative must facilitate deep and compassionate change, both in individuals well as the community, and create an enabling environment offering optimal solutions that are within the reach of all.
She believes that deep, heart-centered development leads to an awareness of the hidden connections within one self and how we relate to the broader world (beginning with ones own body and the way we use it).
In the current dominant paradigm of development, crucial connections between the micro and macro are badly severed. Collusion of the market, business, and the development industry has resulted in the greatest alienation from self and from the eco-system that humanity has ever experienced.
