Hillbrow’s Mould Empower and Serve appoints new CEO
JOHANNESBURG – Pienaar has had a heart for MES since day one when she first joined MES as a service year volunteer in 1994.
Mould Empower Serve (MES), a Hillbrow community organisation that feeds the poor and displaced people has a new leader.
This follows the appointment of Leona Pienaar as the CEO with effect from 15 January. MES is a Christian social development organisation that has been changing the heart and soul of the city since 1986 and has been actively working towards providing sustainable solutions to pervasive poverty in the inner-city of Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Kempton Park.
Pienaar’s appointment followed the earlier announcement of the resignation of former CEO Reverend Alan Childs, and the interim appointment of Reverend Johan Krige.
Krige was appointed in June last year whose interim term came to a close at the end of December last year.
According to the organisation, Pienaar has been a valued member of the MES family and has worked for the organisation for more than 25 years.
She knows the organisation intimately and has been a part of contributing positively to its vision in various capacities, said Reverend Hannes Windell, chairman of the MES board.
“Ms Pienaar has had a heart for MES since day one when she first joined MES as a service year volunteer in 1994,” Windell added.
“Her zeal to reach out to street children is admirable and led her to be the co-founder of the Johannesburg Alliance for Street Children only a few months later.”
Pienaar holds a bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of Stellenbosch and for the past 13 years, she has led the organisation’s national fundraising and marketing team, raising on average more than R33 million each year to fund the various MES programmes across South Africa.
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Some of the notable initiatives she has founded in this role include the popular yearly Hillbrow Unplugged charity concert which takes place this year on 9 February.
The decision to appoint her as CEO was a unanimous one by the board of directors, said Windell.
“Not only is she highly knowledgeable about the needs of MES and the inner-city communities it serves, but she has also built meaningful supportive relationships with people who share the vision of MES and support the organisation through funding and in other valuable ways,” he added.
Pienaar said, “I am very excited about the appointment and look forward to adding value to the delivery of the vision of MES – a vision which I adopted very personally since the very beginning of my career.”
She concluded that the heartbeat of MES was its dedicated personnel and added that she was looking forward to serving the inner-city community alongside them.
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