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02 November 2018 | Story Charlene Stanley | Photo Johan Roux
Grassroots Champions Rising Above Challenges
Prof Richard Teare, President of the Global University of Lifelong Learning (GULL) (far left), Karen Venter, Head of Service Learning (second from left) and Bishop Billyboy Ramahlele, Director of Community Engagement (second from right) with graduates of GULL’s non-academic programme.
Reciprocity. That’s what it’s all about when it comes to engaged teaching and learning in a community context.  Everyone must benefit – which includes getting recognition for what you’ve achieved,” says Karen Venter, Head of Service Learning in the Directorate: Community Engagement.
   
This conviction was put into practice at the recent Grassroots Community Engagement Awards. It was an opportunity to thank and award all the role players who made a success of this year’s Learning Festival, presented in partnership with Bloem Shelter on the Bloemfontein Campus earlier this year. During the festival, 55 skills development workshops were offered in a collaborative effort to create sustainable income-generating micro enterprises.

Global University for Lifelong Learning graduates

The awards function also doubled as a proper ‘Cap and Gown’ ceremony for 18 participants in the Global University for Lifelong Learning (GULL) programme. For the past three years, they’ve been involved in action learning on a uniquely designed Professional Bachelor Pathway to Holistic Development. This pathway is rooted in spiritual, personal, and professional development, where the learning of skills for entrepreneurship is key to gain personal and professional viability, moving from dependence to independence.

“GULL’s approach is to give people in the community a chance to advance themselves. Our focus is professional and not academic. It’s about life skills and professional skills where people don’t have the funds or qualifications to follow an academic route,” explained Prof Richard Teare, President of GULL, who came all the way form the UK to officiate the ceremony.
  
Academics and Life Skills running parallel

“What makes the UFS involvement in our programme so great, is that it’s run parallel with an excellent academic programme offered by the university.”

He emphasised the importance of graduation ceremonies, as it instilled a sense of pride and gave graduates an opportunity to reflect on how far they’ve come in improving their own circumstances. 

“This is a deep form of learning, because we are enabling people to move from their difficult circumstances and release their own inner potential.”

News Archive

German Ambassador speaks on universities as agents for transformation
2016-05-25

Description: German Ambassador speaks on universities Tags: German Ambassador speaks on universities

Eva Ziegert, JC van der Merwe, Lindokuhle Ntuli, Anita Ohl-Meyer, Ambassador Walter Lindner, Tali Nates, and Prof Leon Wessels at the dialogue session hosted by the IRSJ
Photo: Johan Roux

“Change is facilitated through education, not by means of radicalism, violence, or revolution.” Speaking at the Bloemfontein Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS) on Thursday 12 May 2016, the German Ambassador, Walter Lindner, urged students to engage in profitable dialogue instead, keeping their values and ideals in mind while changing the system from the inside.

The Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice (IRSJ) hosted a full day of dialogues and discussions, the highlight of which was a critical dialogue with Ambassador Lindner, entitled “Universities as agents of transformation in society—Germany’s experience with the student protests of the 1968 movement and the difficulties it has reconciling with its past.” This was followed by a student colloquium, hosted by the Student Representative Council, which concluded with the second in the Africa’s Many Liberations seminar series, co-hosted by the IRSJ and the International Studies Group (ISG), with the title of “Fanon and the relevance of personal and collective decolonisation in today’s South Africa”.

Mr Lindner related his experience of student protests in Germany during the late 1960s, drawing certain parallels with South Africa’s own recent protests. According to Ambassador Lindner, it is “the impatient youth that drives forward change”, but cautioned against radicalism as a long-term solution.

Pointing out the various challenges facing humankind today, such as the lack of natural resources, unbridled climate change, and population growth, Mr Lindner stated that politicians (and the youth of today) would do well to focus on these greater issues, rather than focusing on the more mundane issues with which they are faced on a day-to-day basis.

The subsequent dialogue session was facilitated by Tali Nates, Director of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre. A diverse array of questions and comments, both radical and more conservative, was directed at the ambassador, which he handled with unflappable aplomb.

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