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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

Significant support for Student Safety March in Bloemfontein
2017-07-28

 Description: Student Safety March Prof Petersen Tags: Student Safety March Prof Petersen 

SK Luwaca, UFS SRC President; Thapelo Ngozo,
CUT SRC President, and Prof Francis Petersen,
UFS Rector and Vice-Chancellor, during the handover of the
memorandum at the Bram Fischer Building.
Photo: Johan Roux

The University of the Free State (UFS) and the Central University of Technology (CUT) united in a Student Safety Awareness March, which took place on Thursday 27 July 2017 from the UFS Bloemfontein Campus to the Bram Fischer Building.

The peaceful march had a turnout of approximately 1 500 students and staff from both institutions, led by the Student Representative Councils (SRC) from UFS and CUT. The purpose of the march was to hand over a memorandum to the Provincial Commissioner, Lieutenant General Lebeoana Tsumane, who acknowledged it on behalf of Mr Sam Mashinini, MEC for Police, Roads, and Transport in the Free State. The memorandum includes students’ demands regarding safety around student residential areas and general student safety in the city.

Prof Francis Petersen, UFS Rector and Vice-Chancellor, who – together with other members of the senior leadership group – was part of the march, says he is very impressed with the outcome of the march and the participation rate of both staff and students, as well as the joint efforts between the UFS and CUT to arrange the march.

Prof Petersen says, “There are public spaces where our students feel unsafe, and we would like the city and the province to seriously look into that and work with us to try and see if we could make those spaces safe.

A week filled with safety activities
The march was part of the Safety Week taking place from 24 to 28 July 2017, during which the UFS SRC, together with other stakeholders, took part in several activities on and off the Bloemfontein Campus. These included door-to-door visits to student homes and residences on and around campus, awareness campaigns at all the gates of the campus, and a Safety Dialogue held on 26 July 2017 at the Equitas Auditorium on campus.

The aim of the Safety Week was to focus on informing, educating, and encouraging students as well as the Mangaung community at large, to work together in creating a safe environment for students. The week started with the roll-out of an awareness campaign titled Reach Out, which was set to bring students and the community of Mangaung together to help decrease the number of violent crimes faced by students off campus. The communication plan included safety messages, using outdoor billboards, posters on lampposts around the residential student areas, local community radio stations, campus media, and the university’s social media platforms.

 Description: Student Safety March Tags: Student Safety March  

UFS and CUT students and staff, occupying the streets of
Bloemfontein during the Safety March.
Photo: Johan Roux

Accreditation of off-campus accommodation service providers
Over and above the Safety Week and safety awareness march, the university has initiated a number of other projects as part of its student safety strategy. This includes a process to accredit off-campus accommodation service providers in Bloemfontein who provide accommodation to students. The decision to accredit these service providers comes from a concern by the university management about the safety of students and the conditions under which some of our students live in off-campus accommodation. The accreditation process entails a list of primary requirements, drafted with the cognisance of the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality and the SRC, in terms of off-campus accommodation to which private providers must adhere in order to be accredited by the university. The requirements are in line with the Policy on the Minimum Norms and Standards for Student Housing at Public Universities (Government Gazette 39238, dated 29 September 2015).

Transport to and from campus
Another project to be initiated on 31 July 2017 is a transport pilot project with Interstate Bus Lines to assist students with transport and access to the Bloemfontein Campus. The route includes various stops in the areas surrounding the campus, as well as a hop-on/hop-off route within the campus.


Released by:
Lacea Loader (Director: Communication and Brand Management)
Telephone: +27 51 401 2584 | +27 83 645 2454
Email: news@ufs.ac.za | loaderl@ufs.ac.za
Fax: +27 51 444 6393


 

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