Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
03 April 2019 | Story Xolisa Mnukwa | Photo Vhugala Nthakheni
Uhuru Qwaqwa Arrival
The #UFSWalkToUhuru team arrives at the UFS Qwaqwa Campus on Friday 22 March.

The University of the Free State (UFS) Division of Student Affairs, in collaboration with the UFS Office for International Affairs, have joined hands to drive a fundraising and student-accessibility initiative dubbed, ‘The Walk to Uhuru’ (#UFSWalktoUhuru), which is aimed at raising funds and advocating for the educational rights of the less privileged. 

The project aims to raise funds in excess of R2 million from the public and stakeholders affiliated with the UFS (Kovsie staff and students). The project derives from the 2018/2019 UFS Institutional Student Representative Council (ISRC) mandate ‘Students Must Graduate’. The ISRC mandate aims to source funding opportunities for UFS students to register, and to complete their studies across all three campuses in 2020 and beyond.

The first leg of the project, a 350 km walk from the Bloemfontein to the Qwaqwa Campus, has already taken place and concluded on Friday, 22 March 2019 as planned. The #UFSWalkToUhuru team successfully completed the first leg of their journey to academic freedom for financially disadvantaged students at the UFS. The Uhuru team is now focusing its attention on the second leg and is determined to take on Mount Kilimanjaro (Uhuru) from 20 June to 20 July 2019.

The team sat down for a debriefing session to unpack the overall experience and result of the first half of the initiative, and they all agreed that the walk to Qwaqwa was an enlightening experience. It was a walk that comprised learning opportunities, team building, and goal crushing.

According to Rethabile Motseki, member of the #UFSWalkToUhuru team, the walk to Qwaqwa made a significant impact on the project, as the university community is now aware of the significant goals that the team is trying to accomplish. The team has also resumed their fitness-training programme to ensure that they are ready to take on the Uhuru climb in June.

A media briefing will take place shortly (date to be confirmed) to detail the ongoing fundraising initiatives rolled out by the #UFSWalkToUhuru team.  We implore you, and the nation as a whole, to help establish a better future for disadvantaged UFS students by donating to the initiative.

Students, staff, and the public can support the cause and make contributions/donations to the initiative by visiting the UFS Walk to Uhuru #givengain account page.

For more information, contact UFS SRC President, Sonwabile Dwaba, on DwabaSJ@ufs.ac.za  or Rethabile Motseki on MotsekiR@ufs.ac.za  

News Archive

School of Nursing receives a considerable grant
2011-06-01

Our School of Nursing once again became the proud recipient of a grant from the Atlantic Philanthropies, an international organization dedicated to “bringing about lasting changes in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people”.

Atlantic Philanthropies granted millions of rands to South African nursing training institutions via University Based Nursing Education (UNEDSA), which will provide six recipient institutions the opportunity to transform nursing academic programmes in South Africa over a period of four years.

We recently received a R3 100 000 grant for the school to transform nursing scholarship and clinical practice. This is but the latest installment in a total grant of R16 million.

The School of Nursing, under the leadership of Prof. Anita van der Merwe, former Head of the School of Nursing, submitted a proposal to UNEDSA and was selected as one of the six recipients of the award. The school is now at the beginning of the third financial year of the project.

According to Dr Annali Fichardt from the School of Nursing, the school established a unique Virtual Health Teaching and Learning facility for training students in a non-threatening, simulated environment and to prepare nurses to be capable and to function optimally in the dynamic health-care environment. This provides opportunities for experimentation and sharing of integrated teaching and learning in nursing education.

The project helped establish a new unit for continuing professional development and research capacity development to serve practicing nurses and staff members of the School of Nursing. These initiatives will result in a fully transformed and accredited portfolio of programmes at undergraduate, post-basic and postgraduate levels to meet the needs of a range of health-care settings and learners.

The School of Nursing hopes to create an innovative teaching and learning environment that empowers students and professional nurses to become clinically excellent, able to practice independently in both resource-poor and technology-rich areas, and manage such complexities in an innovative way.

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept