Project description

This is a longstanding partnership between the REACH our Community (ROC) Foundation and the UFS. The ROC foundation is a non-profit organisation serving the communities of Heidedal and Bloemfontein; it serves as a multi-purpose community centre that supports orphaned and vulnerable children in Heidedal and surrounding communities, aiming to offer learners a platform to rise above their circumstances. Using a family-based, holistic approach to child and adolescent development, the ROC foundation addresses the challenges facing orphaned and vulnerable children. These include poverty, familial unemployment, the impacts of HIV/Aids, single parenting or living with extended family, lack of caretaker supervision (child-headed households), a hostile home environment, and physical and/or sexual abuse.

Within this context, engagement with students from different faculties at the UFS takes place at the interface of this partnership.

Project content

• This project involves the presentation of service-learning modules from the Faculty of Health Sciences, namely third-year medical students in Community Health.
  
• From the School of Nursing, various service-learning modules are presented on undergraduate and postgraduate level. These include Community Psychiatry, Child Paediatric Care, and Nursing Education.
• In the Faculty of the Humanities, service-learning modules are presented that involve students from the Odeion School of Music in a music programme.
• A project in the Department of Fine Arts.
• Research.
• Mandela Day initiatives.

For more information, contact:
Bishop Billyboy Ramahlele
T: +27 51 401 2822
C: +27 82 401 3279
E: ramahpm@ufs.ac.za

Karen Venter
T: +27 51 401 3732
C: +27 83 310 3715
E: venterk1@ufs.ac.za