Staff

Pumla Mtambeka:
Assistant Director and Senior Social Worker at Childsafe/The Child Accident Prevention Foundation of SA(CAPFSA)

In 1996 I qualified as a Social Worker at the University of the Western Cape.I started working for the Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Southern Africa for three years responsible mainly for education and training in various communities. I then left as I was offered a position in Kraaifontein by Communicare. I got attracted to the job as it meant working with the very disadvantaged communities of Wallacedene and Bloekombos which were very informal areas.I provided welfare services to both communities which included case, group and community work, statutory and pre-statutory work and evaluating implemented programmes. After spending two and half years I joined the South African Police Service by being an Employee Assistant Practitionner for three years. I moved back to Childsafe and became responsible for management and co-ordination of the training of the organisation.

Since 2009 I become responsible for the daily co-ordination and running of the Foundation in Cape Town based at the Red Cross Children’s hospital. I am involved in research, education and advocacy work related to childhood trauma and injuries. This includes decisions on the basic research priorities and the analysis of data. I am furthermore responsible for the
co –ordination of the capturing and analysis of a paediatric trauma database.

Over the past years I have planned, co-ordinated and implemented various prevention programmes in a variety of communities with the aim of preventing childhood trauma. I serve on a variety of committees and task teams that relates to child accident prevention in our country and have presented several papers at local and international conferences.

Yumna Abrahams:
I joined the Child Accident Prevention Foundation of SA (CAPFSA) on 1st July 2009. I have been employed at Red Cross Hospital for about 5 years now.  I first worked at Inforrmation Management, and then I applied for a post in the wards. I worked in the Renal Transplant Unit for 3 years until I made the change to join CAPFSA. I enjoy working at the hospital as I have a love for children.

Consultants

Teri Kruger:
With several years’ exposure to the work of CAPFSA and as a member of the organising committee of the 15th International Safe Communities Conference in 2006, Teri Kruger and her daughter, Tamara, are no strangers to ChildSafe. So, in order to further support the work of ChildSafe, Teri has stepped-in from January 2009 to assist with the organisation’s operational direction, and, to complement the present staff capacity.

Recognised and awarded for her contribution to the energy and environmental sectors, Teri has become known as a project leader both in South Africa and globally. With a diverse set of skills in a number of key industries and business sectors, her career choices have increasingly been influenced by the growing urgency to find sustainable solutions to pertinent socioeconomic and geopolitical issues, hence her focus on global climate change issues.

Her interest has also extended to the fields of injury prevention and fire risk mitigation having delivered several papers at international conferences and co-authored articles on sustainable development, fire & burns prevention as well as energy. Having obtained a BComm with UNISA, her professional experience ranges within Small Medium & Micro Enterprises; Private Public Partnerships (PPP); NGO’s and, multi-national corporate environments.

Recent contracts include CEF (Pty) Ltd and the Department of Energy & Minerals; the official SADC regional project the GTZ / ProBEC, Programme for Basic Energy & Conservation; the collaborative partnership with the Association for Renewable Energy Cooking Appliances (AFRECA) – a division of the Sustainable Energy Society Southern Africa (SESSA); The Paraffin Safety Association of Southern Africa (PASASA); UKUVUKA: Operation Firestop; The Wilderness Foundation; Woolworths; De Beers Marine; MoneyWEB and the CycleTourTrust.

As a keen environmentalist, her love of all things natural has lead her to a career as a social entrepreneur with the founding of a business straddling the environmental and energy sectors. SYNERGETICS is a woman-owned enterprise development and consulting firm focused on mitigating global climate change and energy security through the promotion of sustainable stewardship and resource efficiency as a key imperative of cost reduction within private businesses and public organizations.

Climate change will impact on the daily lives of millions of people worldwide as our ability to provide food, avoid diseases, and recover from extreme weather events is severely impacted. This relates directly also to the types and frequency of injuries experienced as their propensity to malnutrition and income depletion creates additional burdens on a financial stressed populous. This is particularly of concern with low-income families.

Margie Tromp:
Margie Tromp joined Childsafe as a consultant in December 2008 to assist with bookkeeping and financial matters. She worked at Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust as Financial Manager for many years where she gained most of her experience with finances and funder reporting. She recently started her own small consultancy business. Margie is happy to contribute to the worthwhile and hard work of Childsafe and appreciates the peaceful atmosphere at the office.