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09 March 2021 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Charl Devenish
Dr Alice Ncube, Lecturer and Programme Manager in the UFS Centre for Disaster Management Training and Education Centre (DiMTEC), believes that women should be part of the decision-making processes, starting at home right down to the legislative platforms.
Rising inequalities worldwide – now exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic – saw the need to re-emphasise the demand for strong, independent civil-society-driven efforts. “This can ensure rights‐based and gender‐responsive national and regional policies focusing on gender equality and women empowerment,” says Dr Alice Ncube, Lecturer and Programme Manager in the UFS Centre for Disaster Management Training and Education Centre (DiMTEC).

The United Nations Gender Action Plan emphasises the need to empower women on clean energy and climate-change adaptation policies. Though women are ‘the other’, they understand the multiple economic, social, and environmental benefits of being at the forefront of sustainable development as primary home-keepers. Unlocking women’s true potential in education, politics, leadership, commerce, and industry will ensure progress. 

A prosperous future for any country requires a peaceful environment for all, especially women and girls, to freely strive to pursue their projects, businesses, and education without fear of gender and sexual violence. 

Women should be part of the decision-making processes, starting at home right down to the legislative platforms. Women need to decide how to participate and how to bridge the gap created by many years of exclusion in areas of life. Their voices should be heard and not only be used to grace occasions for others to make decisions for them. In a genuinely inclusive world, I believe in encompassing a better world for today and the future – an autonomous, peaceful, inclusive, and equitable world.

News Archive

First Global Leadership Summit brings partner universities to our university
2012-05-17

The University of the Free State (UFS) is gearing up for the Global Leadership Summit when students from universities all over the world will visit the UFS. The summit will take place from Sunday 8 July to Friday 20 July 2012. About 180 staff and students from universities in the United States, Asia and Europe are expected to visit the UFS during these two weeks and eminent scholars and politicians have already confirmed their participation. Among them are Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Dr Tim Murithi, Prof. Mark Solms, Fulbright Scholars who were previously tenured at the university, and a number of ambassadors.

Prof. Aldo Stroebel, Director: International Academic Programmes, Office of the Vice-Chancellor, says that our university has increasingly embedded internationalisation in its strategic priorities. The Leadership for Change Programme, jointly hosted by International Affairs and Student Affairs, is a significant step forward in this context. This innovative and unique programme, initiated in 2010, serves as a leadership development programme focused on first-year students. It aims to build layers of new thinking and engagement among students from diverse backgrounds. As part of a year-long engagement, each student spends a period abroad where there is intense exposure to the academic, social, cultural and residential lives of students in other countries. A formal mentor development programme for staff runs concurrently with the initiative.
 
In the 2010 programme, 71 students in various cohorts were placed at nine universities in the USA. Following on the success of this initiative, in 2011, 150 students were hosted at partner universities in the USA, Europe and Japan. The impact of cross-cultural and cross-border experiences on changing and enriching the participants’ minds and attitudes has been manifested in a wide variety of ways at both the UFS and the partner institutions.
 
The Global Leadership Summit, with the theme, “Transcending Boundaries of Global Change Leadership”, is a reciprocal programme of the Leadership for Change initiative. It will focus on international engagements in addressing salient issues around change leadership, diversity and racial reconciliation in Higher Education through critical dialogues between staff and students from all over the world.
 
The programme will be continued during 2013 when 150 students will again be selected for participation and placement abroad.


Media Release
17 May 2012
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication
Tel: +27(0)51 401 2584
Cell: +27(0)83 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

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