Method Gundidza
Method Gundidza is EarthLore’s director. He has been with the organisation since early 2013 and has held key posts as Finance Manager and then as Programme Manager after discovering a deep passion for farming and working with rural farming communities. In addition to his extensive knowledge of EarthLore, he is a Certified Chartered Accountant with almost 20 years financial management experience in both the public and private sectors.
For the past five years, Method has become increasingly involved in field activities that resonate with his childhood days. He found himself being strongly drawn back to his roots in a rural farming community in the Bikita district, Zimbabwe, where his mother and several family members live. He views the return to his roots as opening the way to a sustainable future with his family who grow a diversity of healthy food in their home garden. This provides valuable opportunities to share the exciting wonders of growing one’s own food with his young children and teaches the importance of food production to secure one’s future.
EarthLore’s involvement in Bikita, since 2015, has produced many noteworthy changes and achievements that attract growing interest. These include the revival of svoboda, a small grain lost to Bikita for several decades, and tsenza, a tuber that has not been grown in the area for years. There is also the annual Bikita Seed and Food fair, organised by mainly women farmers, that has become an important festival on the agroecology calendar.
In July 2017, Method was amongst the first graduates of the Gaia Foundation’s groundbreaking three year international training course on Earth Jurisprudence (EJ) which views Nature as our teacher. EJ is deeply respectful of the natural lores that ultimately take precedence over all man-made laws. When we break the lores and laws of nature, we do so at our peril - as we are witnessing with the climate crises we are facing. Method is currently a mentor for the second group of EJ students.
In April 2018, he was invited to speak at the UN in New York on African Perspectives of Earth Jurisprudence – Reweaving the Basket of Life.
He was also invited to France and to South America to present EarthLore’s work.
Method is making a valuable contribution to EarthLore’s growing reputation as an exemplary partner in regional agroecology programmes in Southern Africa, as well as with EarthLore’s partners in Eastern,Central and West Africa.
Mashudu Takalani
Mashudu Takalani is EarthLore’s Programme Manager. She straddles administrative and programme work, assisting in financial management and the coordination of field activities including community dialogues, seed work, agroecology training and eco-mapping processes. Mashudu joined EarthLore (then Mupo) in 2009 as a volunteer, working with communities in Venda until her full time appointment in 2012. This makes her the oldest serving member of the team to date. She enjoys working closely with and learning from knowledgeable elders as she accompanies communities on the journey to reviving their indigenous knowledge and practices, including rituals and ceremonies. She is one of the current group of students engaged in the Gaia Foundation’s three year international training course on Earth Jurisprudence (EJ) which views Nature as our teacher and that the Earth is governed by Nature’s lores and laws.
Audry Dzingira Mushinyi
Born and bred in a small mining town of Zvishavane, in Zimbabwe, Audry was raised by her father who was a professional truck driver and her mother who was a small-scale farmer. Growing up, she had the privilege of experiencing both the busy town life and the peaceful and calm countryside. It was her father`s belief that his children should have an experience of both the town life and country life. The time she spent in the countryside gave her an opportunity to interact more with nature and all things traditional. She is so grateful that, years later, she is part of an organisation that respects and values traditions and is committed to respecting and protecting nature and the general landscape. Through EarthLore’s work, she is learning more about her Shona culture, rituals,ceremonies, and other traditions.
Audry joined EarthLore Foundation in 2021 as Finance and Administration Manager. Her love and passion for working with figures led her to pursue a career in accounting. She holds a Post-Graduate Qualification in Company Secretarial and Governance Practice and has extensive experience in Finance and Accounting.
Since Audry joined EarthLore, she finds herself becoming more interested in spending time in and with nature. She has also been inspired to grow and eat more organic and traditional foods by EarthLore`s work and the farmers they visit during the annual seed and food fairs.
Photo by Sean Laurenz
Sheila Berry
Sheila Berry is the communications and advocacy consultant for EarthLore and part of the management team. Sheila has been with the organisation since 2015 and views her work as saying Yes to Life. She is inspired by indigenous communities reviving their traditions and culture that often starts with reviving their traditional seeds and farming practices. It encourages her to appreciate, respect and learn from Nature and connect with the cycle of life through her small food garden and saving and sharing seeds. This provides a vital counterpoint to her work as an activist saying No to Coal mining in Zululand, South Africa. Her work with EarthLore has made her aware of how sacred ancestral land and water is to the livelihoods of rural farming communities. All of this is destroyed by polluting coal mines that rip apart rural farming communities, their land, their ancestral graves, well-being, life, livelihoods,culture and heritage.
Sheila loves the power of words and enjoys sharing EarthLore’s inspiring work of accompanying rural farming communities to rediscover and to celebrate who they truly are through the knowledge held by their elders, their ancestral land, and in the traditional seeds and farming practices they are reviving.
Sara Davies
In July 2017, Sara started working for EarthLore part-time from Zimbabwe, to assist with fundraising, and then in 2023 she took on the role of Grant Manager for the African Earth Jurisprudence Collective, of which EarthLore is a member. She has a wealth of experience having worked in London for 13 years. After the completion of her MA in Human Rights, she provided fundraising and project management for our close partner, the Gaia Foundation, in London, with whom she currently still works on a part-time basis. Sara has a passion for community food growing, having run her own food growing training project and being head grower on London’s then only certified organic market garden. Back home in Zimbabwe, she set up a community newspaper and continues links with rural farming communities projects in the country. She also assists the African Biodiversity Network with fundraising and communications. She has a beautiful vegetable garden, keeps chickens and is delighted by the joy her two small children get from picking their own food.
Rob Symons
Rob is a web designer, photographer and writer with a passion for wilderness and environmental justice. He is interested in using the internet to spread awareness about environmental and social issues. Rob specialises in communications, web design, developing social media pages, digital security, and IT services for NPOs, including making short in-house videos documenting a range of events. Rob acts as webmaster and manages social media, communications and IT for Earthlore. He is also involved with the Save our iMfolozi Wilderness Campaign.
