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UFS partners with local radio stations to address community issues

08 December 2020 | Story Dikgapane Makhetha | Photo Supplied

In response to the current COVID-19 pandemic, the Directorate: Community Engagement (CE) has initiated an innovative platform on which students can continue to engage with university community partners, and at the same time be assessed for their service-learning and community engagement projects.

The E-Engagement approach also meets the University of the Free State’s (UFS) strategic mandate to be a caring, responsive, and engaged university. Coordinated by the UFS CE office, academic staff and students are scheduled to engage with the community partners through radio broadcasts and virtual mode platforms. Informative content that has been researched, prepared, and presented by students in a pre-recorded format, will address significant issues brought about by the surge of COVID-19, creating a breeding ground for some of the societal ills, such as gender-based violence (GBV).

In order to establish sustainable relationships with community radio stations, a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with two local community radio stations was signed on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus on 10 October 2020. Prof Puleng LenkaBula, the Vice-Rector: Institutional Change, Student Affairs, and Community Engagement, and Bishop Billyboy Ramahlele, CE Director, participated in the commitment to formalise the relationship between the UFS and the two radio stations, Mosupatsela FM and Motheo FM.

Master’s students from the Department of Psychology have produced and pre-recorded podcasts on community psychology. Their topics covered grief and self-compassion. The Department of Nutrition and Dietetics presented topics on a healthy lifestyle and diet. Fourth-year students from the School of Nursing have engaged new mothers concerning post-natal care. The School of Clinical Medicine has addressed the warning signs of burnout and preventative measures.

Bishop Ramahlele emphasised the importance of sustained relationship, which is expected to create further opportunities for interaction through partnerships in skills training (ICT) and the sharing of resources, including consultations through conference platforms. Prof LenkaBula highlighted the significance of the MOA by applauding the initiative, which has unlimited potential to ensure national development through student engagement, since universities create development sites that can be transferred further into the community.

News Archive

Public Protector addresses large audience

2012-04-23

Adv. Madonsela condemns corruption and poor service delivery in South Africa.
20 April 2012

Audio of the lecture

Video of the lecture

Apartheid cannot be blamed for poor service delivery in the country - corruption should shoulder the blame. Eighteen years into democracy, South Africa still has a long way to go before it becomes the society it envisaged for itself.

“We are not there yet,” South Africa’s Public Protector, Adv. Thuli Madonsela, told a packed Wynand Mouton Theatre on the University of the Free State’s Bloemfontein Campus on Tuesday 17 April 2012. She delivered a public lecture on “Academic freedom and corruption in the context of secrecy laws”.

“Are we closer to becoming a society where values such as human dignity are sacrosanct, where freedom for everyone is the order of the day?” Adv. Madonsela asked the audience comprising students, academics and community members. She said corruption is the silent thief that steals the country’s constitutional dream, causing the poor to live undignified lives.

Adv. Madonsela appealed to students and academics to help retrieve the constitutional dream. In encouraging academic discourse on corruption, she said corruption is not only one person’s problem, but that of everybody. She told academics they could help develop the law and so help in the fight against corruption.

Adv. Madonsela, who spent most of Tuesday on the Bloemfontein Campus, met with senior management from the university as well as students earlier.

Her public lecture late on Tuesday afternoon had the Wynand Mouton Theatre bursting at the seams. Some members of the audience sat on the steps inside the theatre to hear the lecture.

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