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16 August 2018 Photo Johan Roux
Teen motherhood is not childs play
Elgonda Bekker of the UFS School of Nursing is pictured with Gladys Magobe, one-day-old baby Neo, and Luvuyo Madasa, Executive Director at RelmagineSA and great-grandson of Nelson Mandela. They were recently involved in a Princess Gabo outreach programme in Thaba Nhchu.
To commemorate the Nelson Mandela Centenary, a group of delegates from the Bloemfontein community had the privilege to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Princess Project and got an idea of how teenagers are taught about planned parenthood. 

The Princess Gabo Foundation and the Responsible Reproductive Health Education Project (RRHEP) is a community service learning project at the University of the Free State (UFS) that forms part of the credit-bearing curriculum of final-year midwifery students in the Undergraduate Nursing programme and is done in cooperation with the office of Community Service Learning.

The big responsibility of having a baby

Every baby deserves a good start in life. Both Elgonda Bekker, coordinator of the UFS Midwifery Programme, and Prof André Venter, head of the UFS Paediatrics and Child Health School and founding director of MACAH (The Mother and Child Academic Hospital Foundation), emphasise the importance of the first couple of years of a baby’s life. 

Having a baby is definitely not child’s play and is a heavy burden on teenage mothers and fathers. As part of the Princess project learners are given a baby doll for one week – with the consent of their parents as the experience can be quite disruptive. UFS students then send cellphone messages to these “doll parents” from their “babies”. For example, “your baby is crying, your baby is hungry, your baby needs to go to the clinic, your baby needs a nappie change” … 24 hours a day.  

Stop teenage pregnancies

The project has been so successful that it achieved an almost zero pregnancy rate at the two schools that are part of the programme. “When we started in 2015, we would have been happy to have saved one girl from an unplanned pregnancy. The outcome astounded us.” When they are responsible for their baby dolls, learners are trained in sound parenting techniques that include breastfeeding, kangaroo care (where their dolls are tied to their chests), health, and life skills. To complement the school curriculum, scholars are required to work out a budget for the baby from a typical South Africa Social Security Agency grant. Not only does this teach them maths literacy, it also illustrates how expensive raising a baby is. 

Parenting is precious 

For Princess Gaboilelwe Moroka-Motshabi, the Princess Gabo Foundation is a calling. Prompted by her own pregnancy health issues, she was compelled to help alleviate the suffering of mothers and babies. Currently, her aim is to supply new mothers with a kangaroo care wrap that helps with infant health and improves mother and child bonding. The wrap, then, seems to not only benefit infants, but also helps empower teenagers to prevent unplanned pregnancies with the help of the foundation.

News Archive

Louzanne breaks own world record in Switzerland
2017-06-09

Description: Louzanne breaks own world record Tags: Louzanne breaks own world record

Rufus Botha (left), coach of the athlete Louzanne Coetzee,
went overseas with Coetzee and her guide,
Khothatso Mokone, for a race for the first time.
Coetzee improved her T11 5 000 m world record with more
than 20 seconds in Switzerland.
Photo: Johan Roux

She fought against illness, had to get the green light from medical personnel shortly before her main race, and was very nervous. However, on 5 June 2017, the blind athlete Louzanne Coetzee managed to improve the T11 5 000 m world record with more than 20 seconds.

The Kovsie star’s time of 18:14.27 at the ParAthletics Grand Prix in Nottwil, Switzerland, was approximately 23 seconds faster than her previous world record (18:37.23). In addition, Coetzee, who works at the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice at the University of the Free State, also improved the South African T11 800 m record to 2:30.18 on 2 June 2017, and her 4:59.54 on 3 June 2017 in the T11 1 500 m was almost another national record.

Carried by UFS and other support
“One could never be ungrateful when running close to your personal best,” Coetzee said. “Fortunately, with God’s blessing, the support of everybody at home, support from the university, as well as my mom and them, it really was a very blessed and successful event.”

According to her coach, Rufus Botha, Coetzee was not feeling well before the event and had to get medical clearance before the 5 000 m. He told her not to run too hard, even though their goal was 18:20. “She ran an incredible final 600 m, which brought the time down to 18:14,” he said. “It was amazing to watch.”

Botha’s knowledge valuable abroad
He enjoyed going overseas with Coetzee and her guide, Khothatso Mokone, for the first time. “His (Botha’s) experience, knowledge, support, and coaching was extremely valuable,” Coetzee said. “It will definitely help me in future: how to approach things, and everything he shared with us.”

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