Steve Collins has worked in the rural development sector for 20 years specialising in land reform and local economic development linked to natural resources as well as biofuels. He is passionate about involving communities in their own development and making them the focus of NGO and government development initiatives.

His work at the TRANSFORM program involved co-authoring a community manual/toolkit called “Using Natural Resources for community development”. TRANSFORM is an acronym for Training and Support for Natural Resource Management and was funded by GTZ.

His specific skills relate to situating large private sector and government development investments in a rural context so that they stimulate local economic and social development. One of the key areas of his work in last 10 years has been in establishing CPPPs (Community, Public, Private Partnerships) around specific conservation and tourism projects. He was involved in the establishment of the People and Parks Program implemented by Department of Environment Affairs and continue to facilitate interaction between communities and the state around land reform and biodiversity issues.

He is a founding board member of the African Safari Lodge Foundation (See www.asl-foundation.org) and is currently consulting for the ASL Foundation, the African Wildlife Fund and Resource Africa.

While CEO of J&J Bioenergy he was responsible for undertaking several feasibility studies of different energy technologies including cogeneration from biomass, biofuels from numerous crops, ethanol gel fuel and associated stove technology. He has studied wind, solar and hydro power alternatives. He is currently working on locally based ethanol production to be used as ethanol gel which is a paraffin replacement.

He set up a successful social facilitation consultancy called Interface Africa in 1994 and prior to that he mediated development and political conflict. He ahs a range of development facilitation, election logistics and training experience. From 1990 to 1993 he worked for Institute for Democratic Alternatives for South Africa (IDASA), a pro-democracy NGO set up by Dr. Van Zyl Slabbert, where he did human rights advocacy work and political violence mediation.

He facilitated the start of the Human Rights Commission in KwaZulu-Natal and the creation of The Network of Independent Monitors. He was involved in the first democratic election in South Africa as Deputy Direct Monitoring for the IEC in KZN and he was deployed by the UN into Guyana as electoral support.

He currently lives in Johannesburg with his wife Sara and three children. He has a honours Degree in Economic History through the University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban.