Dorah Marema
“I believe that in order to reach a healthy and resilient world that fosters one human race, society has to develop capacities to solve the most pressing problems—like racial inequality, ecological destruction and poverty—by drawing on the wisdom and wealth already present in its people, traditions, culture and environment.”
Dorah Marema has worked with a wide range of NGOs and in different sectors in rural and urban settings focusing on issues of land reform, gender equality and environmental sustainability since 1997. She has worked with a broad array of multi-stakeholder participatory initiatives involving communities, NGOs, government and other institutions in various sectors including small-scale agriculture, environment, climate change, renewable energy, gender equality and land rights at local, national and international levels. She helped establish an NGO called GreenHouse Project, which runs an Environmental Sustainability Demonstration Centre in inner-city Johannesburg, and which Dorah also managed for five years. In 2011, Dorah helped set up and run Seed Community, an organisation which empowers young women and girls through access to higher education. She founded an NGO called GenderCC Southern Africa—Women for Climate Justice in 2008 to work with civil society organisations, activists and experts from the Southern African region working for women’s rights and gender and climate justice. She is also a founding trustee on the Schauenburg Education Trust as well as the chairwoman and trustee on the RSM Education Trust. In 2017, Dorah co-founded the Green Business College, a social enterprise based in Johannesburg dedicated to building green entrepreneurs by uniting green skills with business know-how.