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20 March 2018 Photo Charl Devenish
Town and Gown programme to expand university reach in communities
Prof Petersen signs an MOU with Princess Motshabi Moroka, patron of the Princess Gabo Foundation, at the launch of the Town and Gown programme.
The University of the Free State (UFS), through the office of Community Engagement, launched the Town and Gown programme on 13 March 2018 at the Bloemfontein Campus. The programme seeks to demonstrate the university’s commitment to building sustainable partnerships in communities and its surrounding towns. It aims to be integrally involved in addressing societal challenges, as well as to avail its intellectual and academic resources to partner with civic and religious organisations, government entities and business communities.

Engaged scholarship central to institutional strategy
In his welcoming remarks, Prof Nicky Morgan Acting Vice Rector: Institutional Change and Student Affairs, said: “The university is not complete without its community and in the same way the community should benefit from the university. This has been encompassed in the newly launched Integrated Transformation Plan (ITP) which has community engagement as one of its components.”  The event was attended by representatives of the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality, NGOs, religious and traditional leaders, student structures and UFS staff members.

Prof Francis Petersen: Rector and Vice Chancellor, said the university ought to articulate community engagement differently from what other organisations would do, by showcasing engaged scholarship and using teaching and research to make a difference. He emphasised the importance of being close enough to communities to be able to ascertain their needs in such a way that the component of community is brought into the classroom and in the university’s research.

Expansion of community outreach under way
The long-standing ties between the university and communities in the Free State span many years, during which time various collaborative projects have been established with, among others, Non Profit Organisations (NPOs), such as Bloemshelter, faith-based organisations, and traditional leadership structures.

To date, the UFS has supported programmes in education, health, law and rural development through service-learning programmes, involving students and academics in various fields. The target of the Town and Gown programme is to reach out further to include new partnerships in the Motheo Metro Municipality, Maluti-a-Phofung District Municipality, and Kopanong Local Municipality.

Long-standing partnerships strengthened
At the event, several memoranda of understanding (MOU) were signed to confirm five-year collaborative agreements between the university and partner organisations, one of which is the Princess Gabo Foundation based in Thaba Nchu. Bishop Billyboy Ramahlele, Director: Community Engagement said that the MOUs would strengthen partnership with the communities in research, community service learning, and volunteer programmes.

The Town and Gown initiative is a step taken to re-affirm the university’s commitment to partnering with stakeholders in strengthening the capacity of surrounding towns, metros and the Free State region as a whole.

News Archive

Self-help building project helps to change lives
2017-12-15


 Description: Eco house read more Tags: Anita Venter, Start Living Green’, Earthship Biotecture Academy, construction skills 

Anita Venter, lecturer in the Centre for Development Support, with the residents of
the eco friendly house. Photo: Supplied

UFS PhD student Anita Venter did not know it in the beginning, but her doctoral research would eventually change her life and the lives of many others. 

The research was whether South Africa’s housing policies were socially and culturally responsive to grassroots reality in informal settlements. Venter agreed her research approach might have raised a few eye brows, but it was a journey she holds had more benefits than failures. 

Green living
For her case studies, Venter looked at ‘Start Living Green’ as a concept and further examined the implementation models of Earthship Biotecture Academy in New Mexico and Central America and the Long Way Home non-profit organisation in Guatemala. 

These groups train people with no specialised construction skills in applying and managing environmentally sound self-help building projects. Furthermore, their primary objectives were not building-related, but people-centred, with an advocacy role to create social, environmental and educational change through utilising the building technologies. 

It resulted in Venter signing up for a course in Guatemala to get the skills to implement her case studies here at home in Bloemfontein. 

An experimental mud, straw and waste material structure in her back yard grew into similar houses built in informal settlements, through the transfer of knowledge of indigenous building methods.  

Are rickety corrugated iron shacks only alternative?

Her case studies, one in Freedom Square in the Mangaung Metro Municipality, highlighted, among others, baffling tenure insecurities and “tangible conflicts” entrenched between Westernised and African perspectives on home ownership.

Venter says her thesis, in essence, did not oppose existing housing strategies but did challenge the applicability of an economically inclined model as the most appropriate housing option for millions of households living in informal settlements. 

The main findings of the case studies were that self-help building technologies and skills transfer could make a significant contribution to addressing housing shortages in the country; in particular in geographical locations such as the Free State province and other rural areas.

Venter’s own words after her academic endeavour are insightful: “These grassroots individuals’ courage to engage with me in unknown territories, gave me hope in humanity and inherent strength to keep on pursuing our vision of transforming informal settlements into evolving indigenous neighbourhoods of choice instead of only being living spaces of last resort.”

Positive results 
The study has had many positive results. The City of Cape Town is now looking at new innovative building technologies as a result. Most importantly Venter's study will open further discussions that necessarily challenge the status quo views in housing development. 

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