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Four universities to walk 200 000 km in ten weeks

12 April 2019 | Story Valentino Ndaba | Photo Charl Devenish

“May the best team win the 2019 BestMed Pedometer Challenge!” said LJ van Zyl, Pedometer Challenge ambassador.

Participants in the 2019 BestMed Pedometer Challenge will start improving their health step by step after the University of the Free State (UFS) challenged the Stellenbosch University, Central University of Technology, and North-West University (NWU) to an eight-week walking competition.

South African 400-metre hurdles record-holder and the Pedometer Challenge ambassador, LJ van Zyl, embraced the initiative as an alternative method to achieve fitness. “I am so tired of running and this is great way to stay fit,” he said during the official launch on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus on 5 April 2019.

Inter-institutional fight for fitness

Last year, the UFS Division for Organisational Development and Employment Wellness in the Department of Human Resources led a UFS-only challenge that saw 60 teams of staff members log a total of 54 606 km in eight weeks. The division then challenged the NWU.

Together, the NWU and UFS walked 132 000 km. This year, the UFS is taking it one step further by challenging two more institutions.

Leading the way

“We aim to get South Africa active – starting with the UFS – by embracing fitness and health ourselves,” said Arina Engelbrecht, UFS Employee Wellness Specialist.

Participants on all fitness and activity levels will gun for a 200 000 km target over 10 weeks.

The challenge kicked off on the Bloemfontein Campus with a 3-km walk at the launch, leaving 199 997 km between the four universities for the rest of the eight-week challenge.

News Archive

Academic appointed as Visiting Professor in the USA

2009-02-03

The Director of Research Development and Professor at the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development at the University of the Free State (UFS), Prof. Frans Swanepoel (pictured), has been appointed as Visiting Professor at Cornell University, New York, USA. He has just completed a five-month appointment as a Fulbright Professor at Cornell University. He and Cornell colleagues are collaborating on an initiative to revise agricultural education curricula in Africa, supported by the WK Kellogg and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations. They are also working on a book, The Role of Livestock in Developing Communities: Enhancing Multifunctionality, to be published in June this year. He has also investigated best practice and latest developments in research management and innovation at a number of US universities and delivered the main paper by invitation at a workshop on Research Management at Emerging Institutions at the Society for Research Administrators’ Annual Conference in Washington DC in October last year. Cornell is the only Ivy League University in the USA with a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Photo: Supplied

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