Nelisiwe Salmaitar Mkhawane is one of the prominent youth empowerment activists in Lydenburg, Mpumalanga who is famous and appreciated for promoting both local and external communities within the borders of South Africa. Her activism is visibly seen in the area of Youth Empowerment, and her idea of empowerment firstly touches the notion of Edutainment encompassing of education within the realms of entertainment through Arts & Culture and secondly financial emancipation within the spheres of entrepreneurship. Nelisiwe’s primary mandate is to uplift her community through Arts programs where she engages with the youth and mentor them within the purpose of Arts, and the industry requisites.
Mkhawane’s passion in the Arts & Culture combined with her love of working with the youth is a self-motivated force that makes her unique, passionate and dedicated to her work which is further evinced by the outcome of both her previous and current projects that proves to accrue in quality every time. Nelisiwe’s desire for Arts & Culture came to surface at an early age where she exhibited leadership skills within and beyond the Arts department which scored her accolades of preferred candidate to represent her Secondary School in a girl’s camp twice in a role, specifically the year 2007 and 2008 for Take a Girl Child to Work Project.
Moreover, Nelisiwe holds a certificate in Youth Arts Leadership Programme (YALP) with the Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative, which is where she further enhanced her leadership skills and in addition got acquainted to the wonderful exposure of the business side of Arts, learning Proposal writing, Project Management and Business in Arts. In an interview she patently stresses that as long as you can dream it, you can have it, which boldly speaks to a hardworking personality. As a goal-oriented woman Nelisiwe went on to acquire a number of qualifications including Arts Administration which she was accredited with by CATHSETA. Mkhwane’s perception towards goals and achievements is that women are as equally capable as men hence gender does not equate to ability
After acquiring essential Business skills within the fraternity of Arts Nelisiwe is charitable and kind to share her knowledge with the youngsters from different societies where she mentors them on how to apply for funding.
Further and above Nelisiwe has a promising development initiative she is currently working towards called The Performance Arts Workshop. The workshop entails skills transfer in drama, dance and knowledge on how to apply for funding, for more details about the program dates visit the poster.
Know more about Nelisiwe
Article Questioners.
1. Q:It is often difficult for most people to arrive at a point in their lives where they are genuinely satisfied with their purpose primarily outside any financial gain, kindly take us through your journey of discovering your purpose in Performing Arts, Arts Administration & Community Activism amongst other things related to the above.
A: I fell in love with performance arts from the age of 6 and this got me doing everything in pre-school from music, dance, acting to poetry, I inherently knew this was my purpose to pursue.
Furthermore, I joined several groups in the township, Sisonke, Sofasonke, Bavukile just to mention a few. In high school I was chosen to be the chairperson of the school drama club, which executed a number of beautiful plays, the club’s outstanding performances landed it an opportunity to perform at the launching of Small Claims Court.
After matric I wanted to study performance art but due to financial issues I was hindered, nevertheless this didn’t discourage me from pursuing it later in the future, I kept on working with groups in the community until I started working at Forgotten Angle. This is where I learnt a whole lot of things and developed the love of Arts Administration. However now am more satisfied with behind-the-scenes activities to ensure that people in the spotlight accomplish extraordinary performance as credit of my input.
A lot of artists lack the knowledge of paper work, some are too lazy to commit to it, which is where I step in to make their lives easier because talent alone is not enough you need a little bit of administration to make things happen. I am an advocate of Arts and I will not stop until there is change.
2. Q:As a woman what are the greatest challenges in your line of work and how are you dealing with these challenges?
A: In this lifetime being born a woman is a challenge on its own, there's a whole lot of things that we go through, nonetheless i always make sure that I do everything 10 times better than the opposite sex, I also studied plumbing and construction just to prove that strength does not equate to gender.
3. Q:In regards to Arts Administration & Performing Arts career what has been your top Euphoric Experiences?
Answer:
• Being a project manager
• Being able to help people with their Business plan and Budgets
• Being able to work with different artists and Organizations
• Being able to put together a proposal that gets the funding
• Being able to inspire other women around the province
• And also, being able to work with all the right people in this industry
4. Q: Basing on your previous experiences what has been your career low lights.
A: At some point I felt the deficiency of knowledge and low self-esteem hindered me from pursuing my dreams earlier.
5. Q: Who has been your greatest motivation in pursuit of your dreams?
A: My mother and sisters have always been my cheer leaders from a young age later on my husband joined the team, he always makes sure that everything I do is the best version of me.
6. Q: Kindly share with us 3 projects that you have previously worked on and any two you intend to work on in the future.
A: My Body My Space Festival, Basa awards, Beautiful Things Exhibition. I would also like to work at Mpumalanga cultural experience and National Arts Festival.
