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01 July 2021
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Story Dikgapane Makhetha
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Photo Supplied
This year, the young people of South Africa celebrated 45 years of the annual commemoration of
Youth Day. The University of the Free State (UFS)
Community Engagement (CE) office on the
Qwaqwa Campus has engaged a number of stakeholders in the call to use football as a means of bringing people together, transforming lives, and enthusing communities. Through partnerships, community organisations have great potential to create opportunities for breaking down barriers and inspiring social cohesion, initiating enablement through the development of social projects, and promoting education and health awareness.
On 16 June this year, local community organisations collaborated in the hosting of a soccer event for the youth of Qwaqwa at the FIFA Football for Hope Stadium in Tsheseng.
The Agape Foundation for Community Development,
Love Life,
Right to Care,
Youth in Action, Qwaqwa FIFA Project, and the Tsheseng Athletics Club were all stakeholders who diligently joined forces to ensure the successful launch of the tournament. Community development practitioners, who are trainees in the UFS Qwaqwa Department of Community Development, were garbed in departmental branded gear and have cautiously facilitated adherence to COVID-19 protocols. About 250 people, including football fans and participants, attended and enjoyed the entertaining games. Through the partnered recreational project, the Qwaqwa Campus CE office responded to the 2021 Youth Day theme: ‘Growing Youth Employment for an inclusive and transformed society’, by enhancing opportunities for networking among stakeholders. Football is popularly known for promoting transformational social projects in diverse communities across the globe.
Office of Technology Transfer receives multimillion rand grant
2016-01-15
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The university’s Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) received multimillion rand funding for the office to provide much needed support for academia to have their ideas and research effectively turned into business ventures.
This grant of over R4 million by the National Intellectual Property Management Office (NIPMO), under the auspices of the Department of Science and Technology, will help the OTT to provide an enabling environment for cooperation between academia and industry to transform innovation emanating from research and development at the UFS into business ventures.
“Research and innovation plays a prominent role in the financial sustainability of an institution, in that it has the capacity to be the largest generator of third-steam income,” says Gerhard Verhoef, Director: Contracts and Innovation at the Directorate Research Development at the UFS.
“The OTT is a very new office and this grant, provided over three years, will help us fulfil our mandate.”
NIPMO aims to ensure that recipients of funding from a government funding agency assess, record and report on the benefit to society of IP emanating from publicly-financed research and development. Recipients must protect IP emanating from publicly-financed research and development from appropriation and ensure that it is available to the people of South Africa. A recipient must identify commercialisation opportunities for IP emanating from publicly-financed research and development.