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27 March 2018 Photo Charl Devenish
Karee and Tswelopele win Stagedoor finals 2018
Karee and Tswelopele joined forces to win Stagedoor 2018.

Triumph in categories for best creativity, best drama, and overall performance, were the order of the night for the dynamic-duo, Karee and Tswelopele. Their heated performance stole the judges’ hearts and earned them their first-place victory. “Beylief”, the words Beyers Naude and Madelief joined together, won second place for the authentic story they told with their unique rendition of musical theatre. Armentum and Khayalami secured third place.

The Stagedoor finals marked yet another spectacular, spirit-filled night for first-year students and the Kovsie community. The Kopanong Auditorium stage lit up with theatrically performed stories that are relevant to South Africa’s modern society.

The Department of Arts and Culture established Stagedoor as an interactive theatre and musically infused cultural competition for the student residences and which is unique to the University of the Free State (UFS). 

The competition’s aim is to tackle modern-day issues such as infrastructure and economic inequality, land reform and education. It also aims to examine the pressures that come with university life, and many other issues that face South Africa, but more specifically the youth. First-year residence students are then tasked with the duty of transforming the “script” and bringing it to life.

This year’s Stagedoor of course encompassed heart-wrenching content that depicted resolute attitudes from students who not only wrote their own scripts, but who performed with spirit that was lit by fire. To view the videos that were taken on the night visit the UFS Twitter and Facebook pages.

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CDS receives another international grant from the NIH
2015-12-11

 

Dr Carla Sharp

The Centre for Development Support (CDS) is partner to another international research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. The new project follows an earlier project funded by the NIH, which focused on the mental health of orphans and vulnerable children.

The new project is to focus on investigating possible improvements in the mental health and cognitive development of orphaned and vulnerable children aged between seven and eleven years, by means of improved community-based care in the Mangaung Township area in Bloemfontein.  The project will stretch over three years and has a budget of approximately R10 million.

“We shall use the Mediational Intervention of Sensitizing Caregivers (MISC) approach and it will be applied by community-based organisations,” says Dr Deidre van Rooyen, Acting Director of the CDS. 

MISC applied by caregivers has produced good results elsewhere in the world. “This is the first time MISC will be tested by community-based organisations,” says Prof Lochner Marais of the CDS, who is also the principal investigator in South Africa.

“In addition to working with four community-based organisations in Mangaung, Childline Free State will also be actively involved in the project,” Marais added.

The project is being conducted in collaboration with Dr Carla Sharp as principal investigator at the University of Houston, and Prof Michael Boivin (an international expert on MISC) at the Michigan State University. Dr Sharp was recently appointed visiting professor at the CDS. 

“It is indeed a great privilege to be working with the CDS on yet another project,” Dr Sharp remarked, also noting that “the project is preliminary in nature and could evolve into a much bigger research project in future”.

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