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New UFS programme to partner with communities in taking charge of their lives during and after COVID-19

17 July 2020 | Story Nitha Ramnath | Photo iStock

community engagement_read more — The UFS initiated a new community engagement programme to help communities take charge of their lives.

The University of the Free State (UFS) is launching a new community engagement programme to help communities take charge of their lives during and after the national lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The E-Community Engagement Programme will run for the duration of the lockdown to ensure that the UFS continues to serve all people. This programme is one of more than 120 community development programmes and projects that the UFS is involved with this year.

Rev Billyboy Ramahlele, Director: Community Engagement, says this strategy is the result of the Institutional Transformation Plan, which seeks to deepen the university’s commitment towards the betterment of our communities by creating sustainable partnerships for development. “This programme is dedicated to assisting communities to take charge of their lives during and after this pandemic and will focus on sustainable livelihoods and family support”, he says.

With these community development programmes and projects, about 3 000 UFS students spend at least 127 000 hours per year engaging in 73 service-learning modules. This excludes the clinical work done by our medical and education students in the community through community-based education and inter-professional learning. The university’s 22 student volunteer associations play an important role in community development projects. Our academics and researchers contribute their intellectual resources through their involvement, teaching, and research in different aspects of community life.

The E-Community Engagement Programme refers to an alternative online/virtual community engagement platform aimed at facilitating continuously negotiated collaborations and partnerships between the UFS and the interest groups that it interacts with, aimed at building and exchanging the knowledge, skills, expertise, and resources required to develop and sustain society. Such alternative engagement stems from adapting physical face-to-face (f2f) community engagement to an e-environment. As a result of the uncertain state of restricted f2f engagement during the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus of participation, dialogue, engaged learning, and teaching by university staff and students is on citizens actively participating in the development of their own lives and that of their surrounding communities.

Details of the E-Community Engagement Programme will soon be published on the UFS website, and will be presented on radio and online in partnership with Motheo FM, Mosupatsela FM, Kovsie FM, Mangaung Municipality, Towers of Hope, Princess Gabo Foundation, Rock Foundation, Bloemshelter, and all our faculties.

News Archive

Moot Court competition bigger success than ever before

2009-10-27

Here are the members of the winning team in the Afrikaanse section: André Stander and Wilmie Stander.
Photo: Stephen Collett

The University of the Free State’s (UFS) Department of Law of Procedure and Law of Evidence again presented the First-year Moot Court Competition this year. This interuniversity competition was presented for the fifth time this year. The Universities of the Free State, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Rhodes, North-West, Zululand and KwaZulu-Natal (both campuses), as well as an international institution, the Charlotte Law School in North Carolina in the USA also participated in the competition.

The last-mentioned participant was indeed a highlight for the Department of Law of Procedure and Law of Evidence. The students of the Charlotte School also initiated a community service project for a school in a disadvantaged community. According to Adv. Mariëtte Reyneke from the Department of Law of Procedure and Law of Evidence, the students of the UFS’s Faculty of Law will also participate in this project. The team’s participation is a result of negotiations to work together between Prof. Neels Swanepoel, departmental head, and the Charlotte School of Law early in 2009 as part of the university’s internationalisation priority.

“We are really excited about the growth of the competition that started out with three universities to where it is today. We believe that it is a cause for celebration,” said Adv. Reyneke.

Only first-year students may participate. The competition will take place in the High Court and the final rounds in the Court of Appeal. The judges are compiled from retired judges, practising judiciary, magistrates as well as retired lectures of law. Only a small number of law practitioners get the opportunity to appear in the Court of Appeal and to do this in your first year in front of a judge is an excellent exposure and career forming. This is also the only competition in the country where students can participate in either an English competition or an Afrikaans competition.

Sixteen English teams (9 universities) and 7 Afrikaans teams participated in this year’s competition.

At the prize giving function the UFS team was crowned overall winners of the Afrikaans section and a team from the University of Pretoria as overall winners of the English section of the competition.

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