Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
17 July 2020 | Story Nitha Ramnath | Photo iStock
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

Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French impresses at conference
2010-02-24

 
The five staff members from the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French at the UFS who recently made history at a conference held at the University of Pretoria (UP) were, from the left, front: Ms Swart, Prof. Steyn, Dr Van den Berg; back: Mr Senekal and Prof. Van Coller. Photo: Supplied


Five staff members from the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French at the University of the Free State (UFS) recently made history at a conference at the University of Pretoria (UP). The department presented the most papers coming from one department and university at a conference entitled “Patryspoort na buite”. Ms Corlietha Swart, Prof. Jaap Steyn, Dr Cilliers van den Berg, Mr Burgert Senekal and Prof. Hennie van Coller all presented excellent papers at the conference.

According to Ms Swart, three of the five papers focused on different aspects of the author and linguist, G.R. von Wielligh. The Von Wielligh papers took up a full session of the conference.

With Von Wielligh’s 150th commemoration in 2009, the National Afrikaans Literature and Research Centre (NALN), under the auspices of the curator Mr Otto Liebenberg, decided to research this underrated figure’s contribution. Swart’s paper titled “Landmeter Von Wielligh op ongekarteerde taallandskap”, took a look at this figure as a linguist. Prof. Steyn focused on “G.R. Von Wielligh as historikus van die ‘eerste’ Afrikaanse taalbeweging” and Prof. Van Coller’s paper concentrated on “G.R. von Wielligh se bydrae tot die voorsiening van Afrikaanse leesstof en die kweek van ’n leeskultuur: ’n literêrhistoriese perspektief op sy skeppende prosa”.

Dr. Van den Berg read a paper on “Die transmissie van trauma: ‘Tralievader’ deur Carl Friedman” and Mr Senekal’s paper gave an overview of “Die representasie van vervreemding in hedendaagse Afrikaanse protesmusiek”.
- Lize du Plessis

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