Kari has lived (off and on) in Observatory since 1991. She has her own business through which she develops and runs university programmes in Sustainability Studies in various countries. She also creates & implements travel programmes for (mostly) academic clients across Southern Africa.
She has also been part of the voluntary steering committee of Friends of the Liesbeek for many years. The Friends run a full-time maintenance team on the oldest urbanised river valley in South Africa, with the aim of conserving the health & biodiversity of this precious waterway. Kari is one of the co-ordinators of the monthly volunteer community clean-up which has been running on the Observatory section of the river for 10 years.
Being an enthusiastic and highly practical person, she loves to get people excited about greening and improving public spaces whenever the opportunity presents itself. She believes firmly that people can, and ought to, leave any space improved by their occupancy!
Living in a divided and deeply unequal urban society, Kari is fascinated (and not a little daunted) by the challenges present in the City of Cape Town. Kari likes to work to improve matters in the communities where she lives and hopes to always leave a positive footprint on the world. She chose to live in Observatory because a sense of “community” is very important to her, and building positive interactions across a broad demographic is eminently possible here.
Kari hopes to continue to add value to the OBSID as someone who lives and plays in the community of Observatory and wants to invest her time in creating new realities from a collective vision.