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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

Women’s Day Lecture by Zanele Muholi

2014-08-04

The Gender Studies programme at the Centre for Africa Studies presents the 2014 Women’s Day Lecture with guest speaker Zanele Muholi.

Muholi, a photographer and visual activist, will show new photographs as well as a new video produced in Durban as part of a presentation exploring Born Frees (the generation born post-apartheid South Africa known as Mandela’s great-grandchildren), and how each person expresses themselves queerly at the time of troubling hate crimes in South Africa. The young adults she depicts are those born in 1990–1994, and openly gay/lesbian/trans within South African borders.

Date: Friday 8 August 2014
Time: 12:00 – 14:00
Venue: CR Swart Auditorium, Bloemfontein Campus

Zanele was born in Umlazi, Durban, and currently lives in Johannesburg. She is known for her work on black lesbians and corrective rape in South Africa. Her work emphasises the importance of queering the normative gaze by representing black lesbians in ‘straight’ portraits in a collection of work titled Faces and Phases. Muholi’s work focuses on queer politics, gender politics and politics of race.

In the 2013 Human Rights Watch documentary titled We Live in Fear, Muholi speaks about the way in which ‘corrective rapes’ have become a binding factor for the LGBT community in South African townships and the importance of documenting lesbians who have become victims of these hate crimes. In 2009 Muholi founded the non-profit organisation Inkanyiso which focuses on visual arts and media advocacy for and by the LGBT community. Muholi is an Honorary Professor of the University of Arts/Hochschule für Künste Bremen.

To attend the lecture, please contact Nadine Lake at LakeNC@ufs.ac.za or +27(0)51 401 3813.

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