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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

Little Professors enrol at UFS

2012-01-20

Little Professors in the making: Archie Barclay, 3 years, (left) and Khanya Nondabula, 6 years.
Photo: Phelekwa Mpono

About 65 small children have taken up residence at our Bloemfontein Campus, joining the Kovsie family.

The little ones, whose ages range from three months to six years, are the first kids to enrol at The Little Professor Crèche on the campus. The crèche, with its motto Preparing little minds for greatness, opened its doors on 9 January this year.

Head of the crèche, Mrs Ricka van Kerkhof, says they received a flood of applications for the 105 available places and forty more kids will be taken in during the coming weeks. Van Kerkhof says the crèche is open to everyone, but preference is given to children of UFS personnel. Currently 90% of the kids are those of university staff.

The well-equipped crèche has enough toys to fill up a small shop and offers extramural activities such as piano lessons, swimming, chess and pottery classes. All classes have flat-screen televisions for kids to watch educational programs. The crèche caters for six classes, infants up to Grade R. The Pre-grade R Curriculum and Foundation Phase Grade Curriculum R-3 of the Free State Department of Basic Education are followed. The language of instruction is English and parents who want to enrol their kids will pay R 1150.00 per month.

Van Kerkhof, who calls her job the best in the world, says The Little Professor is not a care facility. Rather it’s a place where kids are taught to concentrate on education. “We are teaching kids to be clever.”

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