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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

During 2011: Infrastructure at the UFS
2011-12-01

Video clips:

Health Sciences Building
Clinical Skills Centre
Economic Sciences and Lecture Hall Building
Teacher Education Building
Biotechnology Building


A publication in which the infrastructure developments at the UFS are portrayed, was published this year. This publication celebrates the enormous development projects undertaken.
 
Description: 2011 Infrastructure_part 1 Tags: 2011 Infrastructure_part 1  Description: 2011 Infrastructure_part 2 Tags: 2011 Infrastructure_part 2  Description: 2011 Infrastructure_part 3 Tags: 2011 Infrastructure_part 3 
Constructive change (part 1) Constructive change (part 2) Constructive change (part 3)

Much has been done this past year to improve the infrastructure of our Bloemfontein and Qwaqwa Campuses with several buildings being built, some renovated and improvements made. Attention was specifically given to the growing need for lecture hall facilities and office space.

Some of the developments on our Bloemfontein Campus include: a brand-new entrance in Nelson Mandela Drive; a Memorial for Women and a Botanical Garden; a building for teacher education opposite the UFS Sasol Library; a building for our Faculty of Health Sciences opposite the Francois Retief Building; a Clinical Skills Centre for Allied Health Professions (the first in the country); and a building for our Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences between the Flippie Groenewoud Building and Wynand Mouton Theatre.

On our Qwaqwa Campus a building for teacher education is being constructed and some of the laboratories were refurbished and upgraded. More student accommodation is also well underway. A village development of four housing units that will accommodate 1000 students will be constructed on our Bloemfontein Campus.
Renovations and extensions were also made to some of the existing buildings such as the Architecture Building, the Biotechnology Building, the Department of Chemistry, the Stef Coetzee Building, the foyer of the Odeion, the Wynand Mouton Theatre and the Callie Human Centre. A staff restaurant has also been established on the Bloemfontein Campus and the building of ‘Little Professors’, a nursery school, is well underway.
“A building not only signals value to the outside; it also builds value on the inside. That is why it is important to notice how space has been organised and allocated to enhance the building of a community and to give academics, students and communities a sense of belonging to the university,” says Prof. Jonathan Jansen, our Vice-Chancellor and Rector.

The funding for most of the projects was made possible with an infrastructural grant from the Department of Education and Training.
 

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