Kholosa Magudu

Kholosa Magudu is the Freshwater Project Manager at WWF-SA. Her journey began at home in Matatiele (Eastern Cape Province, South Africa) where she volunteered with Environmental and Rural Solutions (an environmental NGO) during vacations. She completed a BSc in Environmental Sciences and a BSc Honours in Ecological Sciences at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Pietermaritzburg. As part of SANBI’s Groen Sebenza programme, she was placed with the Duzi-Umngeni Conservation Trust (DUCT) in Pietermaritzburg as an intern where she was later employed as a Water Health Scientist. Some of her key responsibilities at DUCT, were to conduct water quality assessments, waterborne disease research and to help groups use and understand citizen science monitoring tools (MiniSASS) and other river health issues. This work fuelled her passion for freshwater aquatic ecology and people even more. After 3 years at DUCT she joined the Freshwater Programme at WWF-SA. At WWF, Kholosa has worked with communities in areas such as Ceres, Khayelitsha, Stellenbosch including some parts of KZN (in all underprivileged, poor urban settlements). Her focus is leading and providing support to community-led water stewardship initiatives where communities tackle water, sanitation and waste issues. Her role is to engage and capacitate communities to build relationships with key role players to take collective action for water stewardship. Recently, she shared her work lessons and the broader WWF-SA community-based water stewardship approach at World Water Week 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden. From this experience and from presenting at other conferences such as the Conde Nast International Luxury Conference, she is more inspired to broaden her horizons in this field.