Who We Are
About Us
The Human Elephant Foundation’s mandate is to raise funds for suitable projects and implementing organisations, specifically for elephant conservation in Africa. Our projects and interventions include corridors, game reserves, elephant art and helping resolve human elephant conflict.
Whilst our absolute focus and priority is on elephant conservation, the corridors and game reserves we are involved with, support a host of endangered species on the landscapes we target which have suitable habitat, including black and white rhino, lion, cheetah, pangolin to name a few.
The team
TRUSTEES
John Charter
After graduating from Stellenbosch University in Philosophy and English, he spent 37 years in the marketing communications industry in Johannesburg, Toronto and Durban with Ogilvy, McCann Erickson, Lintas and latterly Matthews and Charter,Ogilvy and Mather. For the past 16 years, John has practised as a Corporate Dynamics partner together with his psychologist colleague, working with clients across many industries in South Africa. The key focus of the Company (Black Egret) is business strategy, people development and training.
Having worked for so long in a highly creative (advertising) industry, John believes strongly that human imagination and ingenuity provides the key to the massive problems currently being faced on the planet.
As a 4th generation South African, he has a profound love of his country and continent on many levels. With the legacy of a grandfather who founded the oldest game reserve in Africa, as a keen naturalist in his own right, and being conversant in many local languages, John is both environmentally and culturally immersed in the very fabric of South Africa’s heritage.
He is convinced of the leading role that African sociology, ecology and philosophy can play in stimulating new thinking around the challenges of the human condition in the 21st century.
As a partner in the Human Elephant Foundation, with founder and sculptor Andries Botha, John has campaigned for its extended role in harnessing human creativity to generate important conversations around re-engaging with the earth, and ensuring meaningful sustainability based on an acknowledgement of our inter-dependence with each other and with all forms of life.
Contact: john@humanelephant.org
Andries Botha
Andries Botha lives and works in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has given significant time to exploring the relationship between creativity and other forms of citizenship, which has resulted in his committing his life to being within a teaching and learning environment. Andries has always been highly conscious of the fragile co-existence of man with other life forms and sensibilities.
He has, throughout his creative career, tried to unravel the mystery and responsibilities attached to the idea of co-existence. This search led to the formation of the Human Elephant Foundation in 2006 and its public launch in 2009.
Graduating from the University of Natal in the 1970’s, he won several awards including the Volkskas Atelier Merit Award in 1987, the Cape Town Triennial Merit (1988), the Standard Bank Young Artist Award (1990) and the National Vita Art Award (1992).
Apart from exhibitions in his home country, he has exhibited extensively internationally, including: Oslo and Stavanger Norway, Durban, George, Cape Town, South Africa, Amsterdam, Rotterdam,The Hague and Maastricht Holland, Merida and Mexico City Mexico, De Penne, Antwerp and Terveren Belgium, St Brieuc and Marseilles, France, Gwalior, India; Las Palmas, Canary Islands.Chicago,Fayetteville, Bozeman,El Paso, Detroit USA, Dusseldorf Germany, Lisbon Portugal, Albisola and Venice Italy, Santander Spain, Reykjavik, Iceland, Senegal and Abijan Africa, Bath, UK among others.
For more information on Andries’ work, awards etc please visit his website at www.andriesbotha.net
Grant Fowlds
Grant is a passionate conservationist, a connector and communicator with a unique ability to bring people together. His fluency in both Zulu and Xhosa are a critical tool in bringing this project to fruition. He is a bestselling author, and his 2 books Saving the Last Rhinos, and more recently Rewilding Africa, are opening doors and connecting people from all over the planet with this project and programme for rangeland expansion. Grant has an empathy for communities and the conservation sector he serves that is evident in tireless campaigning.
David White
With a deep passion for conservation and preservation of natural areas, and a life time of experience in helping business leaders build productive, engaged, compliant and sustainable organisations, David White is a natural fit for Rewilding Africa initiatives. David’s contribution is not only in supporting the Rewilding Team in developing natural wilderness areas where conservation can thrive, but also in guiding community engagement, and helping communities located near wildlife reserves access sustainable income generating opportunities.
David is a well know business leader in the KwaZulu-Natal business community, and his networks and influence are a welcome inclusion into Rewilding Africa.
Make a difference
GET INVOLVED
Friends of the Human Elephant Foundation
We require urgent support to assist us in the endeavour to bring about the Loziba Wildlife Reserve project, as well as realising other significant elephant conservation needs throughout Africa. These include corridor and game reserve development, human – elephant conflict resolution, education and awareness through art.
