Valma Hendricks

Valma Hendricks started at the Community Law Center (CLC) (now known as Dullah Omar Institute) in March 2001 as a Project Administrator for the Local Government Project. The Dullah Omar Institute, for Constitutional Law, Governance, and Human Rights is a non-profit organisation based at the University of the Western Cape which conducts research in the areas of human rights and local government. As the Project Administrator for the Applied Constitutional Studies Laboratory (ACSL), Valma is responsible for the administration of the Project, as well as assisting various other Projects with logistics, and facilitation, serving on the committee for women’s rights representing administrators at Management meetings.

Before joining CLC Valma was involved in the NGO field since 1990. Firstly, with an organisation called Project Vote as a Financial Administrator. Project Vote's focus was mainly voter education. She was part of SA's first democratic election as an observer in 1994. Valma has assisted with various election missions with respective independent electoral commissions (IEC), IEC Local Government Elections in 1996 and IEC National Elections in 1999 (both in South Africa). With Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy (EISA) Valma observed the following, Zimbabwe in 2002 and 2008, Malawi in 2009, Zambia in 2015, Lesotho in 2017, and Tanzania in 2020.

In late 1992 she joined The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) an international NGO as an Officer Manager. NDI was an organisation working to strengthen and expand democracy worldwide. She obtains her Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), focusing on Women and Gender studies and History and a B.A. Hons in Social Development. In her personal capacity, she assists the Socio-Economic Rights project with facilitation on human rights education for community leaders in informal settlements. She is currently busy completing her Masters Degree.

Email: vhendricks@uwc.ac.za