“Ms. Amanda Younge Hayes of Amanda Younge cc was appointed to facilitate a strategic planning session for the National Skills Authority (NSA) in March 2023. This assignment was undertaken in March and April 2023. Amanda’s responsibilities included facilitating strategic planning workshops, both in-person and online, consulting with executive management, and preparing the relevant documents. The quality of the work and overall delivery by Ms. Amanda Younge Hayes was outstanding and I would not hesitate to recommend her for further work.”
Olwethu Nyewe, Director: National Skills Authority Secretariat
“Ms. Amanda Younge Hayes has led and facilitated [these] processes with great professionalism and experience. Her highly professional and focused facilitation style has allowed to bring all partners in a very sensitive and highly political steering process together and to achieve the expected outcomes. Her focus on results ensuring at the same time the inclusion and participation of all partners were highly appreciated by all participants. We could not highly enough recommend [her].”
Maria Zandt, African-German Youth Initiative, GIZ-AU Office
“Amanda Hayes worked with us as a facilitator to conduct a virtual two-day-workshop this June 2020. This workshop took place within the framework of the African-German Youth Initiative, and it played a pivotal role in documenting pilot phase results and in preparing future strategies regarding youth exchanges. Amanda has been with us in every step of workshop preparations. She was extremely helpful and innovative when we had to decide to turn a physical workshop into a virtual meeting due to the Corona pandemic. She supported us throughout the planning process with ideas for solutions, thorough written and oral preparations and a highly cooperative and dedicated working style. Thanks to Amanda’s various initiatives and contributions we were able to conduct a first-class virtual bilingual workshop with thirty participants from seven different countries, some from rural areas in Africa. She facilitated this workshop in a sovereign manner. Given her very good technical skills she was able to control all advanced Zoom functions and lead interpreters and technicians. With her empathetic and structured facilitation style, she is an expert who I can warmly recommend to anyone aiming to conduct virtual workshops. As Amanda also has excellent analytical skills she was fully prepared to using facilitation to integrate a heterogeneous group so that everyone was able to benefit from the dialogue.
I can highly recommend cooperating with Amanda and am gladly available for any further information in that regard.”
Karoline Caesar, Engagement Global gGmbH
“For the last 2 years, Amanda has been responsible for preparing the Strategic Plans and Annual Performance Plans of the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board and Maritime Centre of Excellence. Amanda is an excellent strategic planning facilitator. Her approach is friendly, creative, flexible and of a very high standard. She has been willing to work above and beyond the call of duty to meet deadlines and to ensure that our Plan addresses the key issues faced by the Board. We are extremely happy with her work, so much so that we have contracted her for another three years. I have no hesitation in recommending her to you.”
Mthokozisi Radebe, former Chief Executive Officer, KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board and Maritime Centre of Excellence
“I have worked with Amanda over many years. I can confirm that she is an excellent facilitator who combines great insight and big picture thinking with the rigour and the attention to detail required to get great results out of an event. She is very creative intellectually, has strong inter-personal skills and has an outstanding ability to distil conclusions and insights out of the conference or workshop process.”
David Schmidt, Director of Strategies for Change
“Amanda is an excellent organiser, very focused and able to cut through the garbage that all too often bogs down people and projects. She is not easily fazed by difficulties, and looks for sensible ways of resolving them. She is an excellent problem solver, approachable and helpful, and an excellent team worker. She is literate and a good communicator. She has always been strongly socially motivated… She is one of the more talented people with whom I have had the pleasure to work.”
Peter de Tolly, former Deputy City Planner, City of Cape Town
“Amanda, you have given us sterling and stalwart service, resulting in an excellent product. I greatly admire your patience at handling all the diverse opinions and comments that have flowed in from all of us. Very many thanks for your very hard work and dedication.”
Richard Barnwell, WWF-UK