Speaking

I have always enjoyed public speaking and debating, and in fact was able to pay my way through university with a grant I won in a national speaking contest in high school.

 

For my entire career, I’ve been a public speaker/teacher of one kind or another. I have:

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• lectured groups of over two hundred fourth-year medical students and at age 24 was voted “best teacher” by the students (while there, I implemented a novel, interactive method of “modular teaching,” and edited 3 textbooks using this approach, published by Oxford University Press);

• taught post-graduate doctors doing the Diploma in Public Health, and served on the Curriculum Reform Committee of the Medical School, pushing to change the curriculum to better meet the needs of South Africa’s black communities;

• qualified in Nursing Education;

• designed, implemented and evaluated a unique new 2-year university course for nurses and doctors working in rural areas of South Africa, the Diploma in Primary Health Care Education;

• got a PhD in adult education, learning more about how to make learning and teaching situations as participatory and empowering as possible (my doctoral thesis was later adapted and published by Kogan Page in London, UK, under the title “Self-Directed Learning: Critical Practice”);

• taught young children and their families about social justice and environmental issues and published a book (“One World, One Earth: Educating Children for Social Responsibility”);

• led a national campaign to end the cosmetic use of pesticides, during which I addressed numerous meetings, protests, and government leaders including the federal Minister of Health, and published a book, “Pesticide Bylaws: Why we need them; how to get them”;

• taught groups of Indigenous lay health workers in both face-to-face workshops and by distance education;

• taught youth to become co-researchers on federally-funded health projects of vital importance to their communities;

• designed a curriculum and learning materials about participatory research for international doctors;

• addressed government agents, academics and policy makers about the need to consider the realities of Indigenous communities in their project planning and funding decisions.

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Please see my CV and my list of publications for more details.