Zorina Noordien South Africa 2016 Grantee South Africa Program 2017 Master's degree in Clinical Psychology at the University of Cape Town
Her thesis was “Exploring Muslim women’s lived experiences of psychological abuse in intimate relationships.”
Zorina currently lectures at the University of the Western Cape and is a member of the Clinical Psychology Master’s program, where she is involved with supervising and teaching student Clinical Psychologists and preparing them for the internship program.
She has worked as a Clinical Psychologist in a Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Division of the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, which is South Africa's only dedicated child health institution, tending to children referred from all of South Africa and from all over Africa. There, she has worked with a diverse population of children, adolescents, and adults from contexts of systemic inequalities, which has fostered a better understanding of the lived experiences and challenges they may encounter. She has managed and facilitated individual and group supportive structures with children and adolescents experiencing medical, neurodevelopmental, psychological, educational, and systemic challenges, working collaboratively with relevant stakeholders, prioritizing the best interest of the child.
Zorina has been volunteering with the Health Workers Care Network since June 2020, offering weekly crisis counselling and support to front line health care workers. This is a nationwide network which offers all healthcare workers across the public and private sectors free support, pro bono therapy, resources, training, and psychoeducation.
She is a co-author of a paper on the subjective wellbeing of children in the Western Cape area.
A quote from Zorina: “What this grant has done for me is given me the knowledge and the skill set to be able to create a difference be it at an individual level or at larger levels when I do group work, when I engage in research with women who are in shelters, that is Margaret McNamara. This was my purpose.”
