Dear friends of the College,
There are some amazing and exciting pieces of interest in this edition of our newsletter. I wanted to give you a sneak peak of three that I was personally involved in. I was privileged to be invited to the United for Wildlife Global Summit which took place in London, UK at the beginning of October.
Hosted by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the summit brought together global leaders from conservation, law enforcement and the private sectors United for Wildlife Taskforce members to exchange the latest ideas, learnings, and best practice in a shared mission to combat the illegal wildlife trade (IWT). The Head of our Field Ranger Training division, Mr Altin Gysman did the College proud and presented the role and plight of field rangers across the globe. In addition Altin gave a fitting tribute to our fallen colleague, past student and friend, Anton Mzimba. Prince William met Altin and Matt Lindenberg (past student and Executive Director of Global Conservation Corps GCC) before their presentation. I felt like a mother hen in the audience, and they did themselves and the SAWC proud!
I am also thrilled to announce that our Executive Team at the SAWC will be growing by one! Dr Joseph Okari will be joining our team at the end of October as our new Executive Manager Business Operations. I am sure you will all join me in welcoming Joseph to our family, and I trust he will find working at the SAWC as inspiring as I do. Please read more about him in the relevant section of the newsletter.
Another highlight since our last edition was the submission of the Diploma in Applied Natural Resource Management to the Council of Higher Education. This is such a great milestone for the SAWC, and while we all know there is still so much work to do, and we will only receive feedback from the CHE during 2023, I just wanted to congratulate the SAWC team, who, with the assistance of Prof Ric Bernard, Professor Emeritus of University of Mpumalanga (UMP) as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and past Professor and Dean at Rhodes University, managed to press the upload button and enter into unchartered waters of progression for the SAWC.
Thanks to our Marketing, Fundraising and Media Relations team, our Quarter 3 Bateleur newsletter is a bumper issue so until next time, enjoy the read!
Best wishes,
Theresa Sowry
Chief Executive Officer
