COMPANY PROFILE
20 Years of Excellence
We provide public, civil society and private sector organisations with the quality advice, strategies and capacity building initiatives necessary to deliver effective and sustainable human settlement programmes. Our work is rooted in community involvement so as to empower communities in South Africa to achieve worthwhile social and economic development.
Some examples of what we do:
- Formulate human settlements plans and strategies, write policy and conduct research.
- Formulate policies, develop education and capacity-building programmes for such projects as land acquisition and release, social housing, tenant management, housing finance compliance, and so on.
- Research and analyse poverty and related social needs.
- Evaluate and assess social and economic development programmes.
- Develop training materials in communication skills, leadership development, coaching and mentoring and conflict management.
- Support grassroots community-based initiatives in areas of need.
Customer Service
We are able to provide experts with decades of training and experience, delivering the highest quality of service.
- We have a proven track record/extensive experience in the field, especially in working with communities on the ground.
- We have the full range of skills/competencies required to meet and exceed your expectations.
- We manage every project effectively and efficiently to ensure you are facilitated through each phase.
- We genuinely provide value-add, primarily by going the extra mile to deliver a high quality product.
Project Planning and Delivery
- We employ a rigorously scheduled project programme that provides the bedrock of certainty on which discretion and flexibility can be exercised. There is no room for confusion or differing interpretations about the project scope and deliverables.
- We will not risk limiting new insights into resolving a problem simply to close off a project when the professional time is up. In other words: we are not prepared to cut corners.
- We believe we are among the few who actually link development to people. We have the historical NGO experience and current on-the-ground involvement in community work to truly deliver on this promise. We also actively participate in the social debate and write about key social and economic development issues from the view point of the excluded and marginalised.
When partnering with INSITE, your projects will deliver lasting social and economic development.
Black Economic Empowerment
INSITE qualifies as an EXEMPTED MICRO ENTERPRISE (EME) in terms of the 09 February 2007 Gazetted Codes of Good Practice and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act 53/2003.
INSITE is rated as a Level 2 B-BBEE company and 51% of it’s shares are owned by previously disadvantaged people.
See our B-BBEE Certificate here.
Our Team
The best way to describe us as a team is through our shared values:
- Honesty – We tell it like it is and act honourably.
- Integrity – We stand by our principles.
- Excellence – Whatever we produce is meaningful, valuable and goes beyond the expectations of our client.
- Productivity – We manage our time and resources efficiently.
- Development – Whatever we do must empower communities to grow and prosper.
As individuals, our unique experience, competencies and qualities enable each of us to provide valuable and varied contributions to the work we do.
Shareholders
Paul Hendler
Paul has 30 years experience in formulating policies, planning strategies and building capacity in the housing and human settlements fields.His experience includes being a founder member of an NGO, Planact, during the 1980s, as well as working in the private sector.
His professional experience covers research, managing and analysing employee housing surveys, providing employee housing administration services, leasing for inner city rental housing in Johannesburg, capacity building and training in the areas of housing finance and tenant management (social housing), and managing large scale consulting teams in the execution of a range of human settlement-related strategy and strategy implementation work. Paul is a founder member of INSITE.
He attends monthly members meetings in his capacity as the executive member involved in the day-to-day running of INSITE and its projects, including the management of the financial accounting and administration of INSITE.
INSITE’s sensitive approach to the need to build independent community organisation reflects Paul’s involvement on a voluntary basis providing leadership, as well as administration and accounting services to a neighbourhood NGO in Stellenbosch (where he is based) that is concerned with community upliftment, nature conservation and sustainable development.
Mogie Pillay
Mogie is a teacher by training and has 15 years experience in the teaching and training field.
Mogie is a member of INSITE and provides a secretarial service to the monthly members meetings, preparing the agendas, recording and storing the minutes.
In addition, Mogie also attends to the authorisation of payments through the financial accounting system and when necessary assists through attending tender briefings and accessing tender documents for INSITE and its partners.
Partners
Arumugam Pillay
Arumugam has 25 years experience in housing policy, legislation relating to housing and micro credit, in the lending environment with both banks and non-banking institutions that are involved in housing, local and international experience and exposure to housing finance systems and different financial mechanisms and instruments to promote lending to the low-income communities.
Arumugam is a founder member of INSITE, having developed the initial Vision of the company with Paul Hendler while on an International Housing Finance training course in the USA.
He helped formulate the initial articles of association, as well as the application for Sector Education Training Authority (SETA) accreditation.
As an Associate of INSITE, Arumugam occasionally makes his decades of experience available by assisting and guiding the team on governance, strategic direction and risk identification and mitigation. He has participated in numerous projects relating to business processes in the social housing field as well as in the mortgage finance cycle.
Associates
Glen Mills
Glen Mills is an architect who has developed a sympathetic understanding of grassroots planning processes and on that basis an acknowledgement of the contribution of informal planning in informal settlements to the housing of a significant portion of our fellow South African citizens.
Paul Hendler first met Glen during the 1990s; Glen contributed to the Social Housing Policy project that Paul was implementing for the Friederich Ebert Stiftung (1996) and Paul in turn contributed to Glen’s inputs to the Alexander Reconstruction Area Project (1998).
Jeremy Wakeford
Jeremy Wakeford, who is chairperson of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO SA), is an economist who has done extensive research into the limits placed on economic growth by the peaking of the production of oil, and therefore on the limits of petroleum products and other fossil-based fuels that drive our current debt-funded economic growth model.
The depletion of conventional sources of energy, climate change and global warming as well as the risks posed to the global credit system are critical factors which undermine the sustainability of human settlements.
Paul Hendler worked together with Jeremy and Simon Ratcliffe (another INSITE associate) on the Peak Oil Scenarios for South Africa 2030 project (for the Presidency (2007)) and also on the Impact of Oil Depletion on the SA Transportation System (for the National Department of Transport) (2009).
Larry Hobson
Larry Hobson, of the Business Modelling division of Learning Strategies (Pty) Ltd, is a chartered accountant who has made a name as the provider of international best-practice financial modelling in the field of social housing.
Larry first met Paul Hendler at a presentation of the latter’s affordable housing information bulletins during 1998.
Together with Neo Tladinyane (another INSITE associate) Paul partnered Larry in an investigation into the potential for funding a small landlord’s rental business to serve the market in the Johannesburg Inner City (2003). The trio worked together again on the Ellis Park Upgrade Development (2003) as well as on a social housing institutions diagnostic project (2004).
During 2004 Larry and Paul partnered in a Data Information Project for the National Housing Finance Corporation and the Gauteng Partnership Fund, and in 2005 in the Organisational Strategy and Property Management workstreams of the Support Programme for Social Housing (SPSH).
Neo Tladinyane
Neo Tladinyane, of Bagale PIC, is a civil engineer who has managed the delivery of many affordable housing projects.
Neo also provides a skilled resource for the gathering of data and information (through stakeholder interviews) as well as in the analysis of collected information, which can be used for the formulation of policy and strategy.
Through his engineering design and project management (physical implementation) skills Neo brings an important dimension to the field of social housing and human settlement planning and implementation.
Neo has participated with Paul Hendler and Larry Hobson in assessing the state of Johannesburg inner city buildings and their potential for refurbishment (2003), with Paul Hendler guided the housing component of the Ellis Park Upgrade Development (2003), diagnosed social housing institutions (2004), trained staff of the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (JOSHCO) in operational procedural manuals (2007), and led investigations for the Housing Development Agency of the affordable and social housing markets in Bela Bela (2011) and Port Elizabeth (2012).
Simon Ratcliffe
Simon Ratcliffe, of the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID), is a long-standing colleague of Paul Hendler.
They studied Development Studies together at the University of the Witwatersrand during the 1980s and participated in the founding of the NGO Planact during the mid-1980s.
Simon is an architect by profession who also holds degrees in Development Studies and a Masters of Business Administration.
Simon led the Peak Oil Scenarios for South Africa 2030 project (for the Presidency (2007)) and also the Impact of Oil Depletion on the SA Transportation System (for the National Department of Transport) (2009), in which Paul participated as a key expert.
Simon also participated in the Home Loan and Mortgage Disclosure Act (HLAMDA) (2009) project as a trainer and facilitator.