Our structure and staff

Structure

IRDNC is overseen by a Board of Trustees of prominent Namibians, with Garth Owen-Smith and Dr Margaret Jacobsohn as executive trustees and co-directors. Two assistant directors, John K Kasaona and Colin Nott, manage the NGO which has a small Windhoek office and two large field programs in the remote northwest and northeast corners of Namibia: Caprivi and Kunene.

Co-ordinators head teams of facilitators and serve on our senior management forum which is the body that makes operational decisions. We have six teams:

• The natural resources team, headed by Beavan Munali in Caprivi and Anton Esterhuizen in Kunene which works with conservancies to manage their wildlife
• Our institutional support team, under Daisy Nheta in Caprivi and Lucky Kasaona and Anna Davis in Kunene, which helps conservancies grow into democratic and effective organisations
• The business and enterprise development team, led by Richard Diggle in Caprivi and assistant director John K Kasaona in Kunene, whose aim is economically independent conservancies
• The West Caprivi support team, where we are working with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and the Kyaramacin Residents' Trust, inside a park in which more than 5,000 people reside, is headed by Frederich Alpers
• Grants, financial management and training is overseen by Karen Nott who as a plant ecologist also works on special plant projects within conservancies
• Our holistic resource management team is led by assistant director Colin Nott, addressing regeneration of perennial grasses in conservancies.

IRDNC also runs a consultancy arm and undertakes African CBNRM-related consultancies, drawing on the vast field experience and technical knowledge of our experienced team of practitioners.

We are also increasingly working on trans-boundary projects with partners in Zambia, Botswana and Angola.

IRDNC has about 60 full time staff, and further supports about 100 community workers. The latter are absorbed into conservancies when these community-based organisations earn sufficient income to take over their own running costs. IRDNC aims to build capacity within rural Namibians in particular and more than 90% of our permanent staff are drawn from the rural areas in which we work.

See the staff structure in Kunene (doc 39 kb)

Staff

Staff profiles

IRDNC is fortunate to have diverse and committed staff. Below are some recent articles profiling some of them:

• Dynamic conservationists tie the (k)Nott, Article on Colin Nott and Anna Davis, published in Conservation and the Environment in Namibia, 2006/7 (pdf 1,325 kb)
• My life is conservation, Article on Beaven Munali, published in Conservation and the Environment in Namibia, 2006/7 (pdf 1,591 kb)
• Stand and deliver, Article on John Kasaona, published in Conservation and the Environment in Namibia, 2007/8 (pdf 1,328 kb)
• Never shy of hard work, Article on Anton Esterhuizen, published in Conservation and the Environment in Namibia, 2007/8 (pdf 1,122 kb)
• Journey from the south to the north: Representing Namibian Conservancies in Alaska Article by Alfred Sibongo about his trip to Alaska to represent Namibian conservancies (pdf 18 kb)