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22 October 2021 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Charl Devenish
UFS staff and students who attended the Talloires Network Leaders Conference, were from the left: Rina Widd, Occupational Therapy Student Association; Lyshea Mapaike, Social Work Student Association; Gernus Terblanche, SRC member for Civic and Social Responsibility; Relebohile Sebetoane, Eco-alliance Association; and Karen Venter.
The University of the Free State (UFS) Directorate Community Engagement was recently (30 September to 3 October 2021) among the 419 institutions and 79 countries that participated in the (virtual) Talloires Network Leaders Conference (TNLC2021).

The conference, which was a global gathering of higher education leaders and students from all regions of the world, focused on Global Institutions, Local Impact: Power and Responsibility of Engaged Universities. 

Some of the highlights of the conference were the sessions titled: Global Universities, Local Impact: Roles and Responsibilities of Universities with Philip Cotton, Head of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Programme; and the keynote address by Secretary John Kerry, US Special Envoy on Climate, titled What can we learn from the pandemic that helps (or hinders) addressing climate change? 

Cotton, believing in the power of compassion in the transformation of young people, said: “It is possible that the more you become the kind of university that matters to our young people, because you connect with the poorest and the hardest to reach, and those most harshly oppressed by climate change, then the more serving, humane, engaged and compassionate you become. 

He added: “Listen to the young people, they are telling us what is wrong with our systems, and the solutions are in their hands.”

Addressing global challenges

According to Karen Venter, Head of the Service-Learning Division in the UFS Directorate of Community Engagement, the event provided the opportunity to critically reflect on the power and responsibility of engaged universities, to collaborate and connect in partnership with communities, and to address local and global challenges. 

“Participants shared knowledge, ideas, case studies, and built collaborations for action on important and interrelated issues, including pandemic recovery and resilience; conflict and inequality; climate justice; assessing engagement; and community engagement futures,” she says.

Some of the UFS attendees remarked that they were amazed by the work being done worldwide. They were spurred on and inspired to not only improve their modules, but also their work in the community.

Besides being exposed to world-class leaders on issues that matter, the conference also maximised engagement and forged connections on a local level. The UFS hosted a delegation of 19 academics, students, and community members from Rhodes University (RU), who not only attended the conference with them, but also an additional pre-conference digital storytelling knowledge-sharing workshop, and a mini-Engaged Learning Festival.

RU also won the McJanet Prize for Global Citizenship, following a review of 28 nominations from 15 countries and 10 finalists from 8 countries.

Sharing best practices

The digital storytelling workshop (where information about projects and people are communicated in short, multimedia tales, told from the heart), according to Venter, rekindled the UFS-RU partnership for sharing local social innovation stories globally through digital storytelling, which was born from the Common Good First EU Erasmus +-funded project.

During the learning festival, the two universities shared best practices on some of the community programmes in which they are involved, including UFS presentations from Enactus for social entrepreneurship, and the No Hungry Student initiative, which involves student residences’ community food gardens. RU reported on their active citizenship (Nine Tenths mentor mentee schools programme) and community-based research projects.

Better together

Besides international conferences such as TNLC2021, and other local engagements to always stay on top of the latest community engagement practices, the UFS and RU are both members of the South African Higher Education Community Engagement Forum (SAHECEF). According to Venter, the UFS-RU partnership showcased how different regional chapters of SAHECEF collaborated as communities of practice to advance the praxis of an engaged scholarship. 

Both the institutions are also involved in the South African Knowledge for Change (K4C) Hub within a K4C Consortium of the UNESCO Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility towards training for community-based researchers in the context of community university research partnerships.

Diana Hornby, Director of Community Engagement at Rhodes University and a speaker at the conference, with Karen Venter.
Diana Hornby, Director of Community Engagement at Rhodes University and a speaker at the conference, with Karen Venter.
A group of 45 academics, students, and community members attended the recent virtual Talloires Network Leaders Conference in the UFS Computer Laboratory on the Bloemfontein Campus.
A group of 45 academics, students, and community members attended the recent virtual Talloires Network Leaders Conference in the UFS Computer Laboratory on the Bloemfontein Campus.
UFS Community Gardens.
UFS Community Gardens.

News Archive

Government supports the UFS's transformation push
2009-09-04

The Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Blade Nzimande (pictured), has lauded the University of the Free State (UFS) for the progress it has made in increasing access for black students.

However, the minister also acknowledged that the UFS has failed in some respects to make important changes.

“The continued racial segregation of the hostels is something that is unacceptable 15 years after the introduction of a democratic order and has no doubt contributed to the kinds of attitudes that led to the notorious incident at the Reitz Hostel last year,” he said.

Dr Nzimande was delivering the JN Boshoff Commemorative Lecture on the Main Campus in Bloemfontein last night.

He said the Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS, Prof Jonathan Jansen, has assured him that he will speed up this issue of residence integration and that he was confident he will do so successfully with the support of the overwhelming majority of the university community.

“He has my support in his new role and he will succeed in taking the university forward decisively along the path towards greater academic excellence and to serving its students and staff, the Free State province and South Africa as a whole, including its poorest and most disadvantaged citizens,” he said.

He said the UFS is an important national asset and “not an asset for some to the exclusion of others”.

“We will play our part as the Department of Higher Education and Training to support you in pursuing transformation, but we won’t keep quiet when we see that there are things that are developing that are actually undermining the realization of the UFS as a national asset,” he said.

Despite the fact that all our universities, he said, have policies in place to combat racism and discrimination, the Soudien Report shows that there is a disconnection between policy and actual discriminatory practice at universities.

“This is a serious problem because this disjuncture is not only because of the actions of maverick individuals on the ground, but includes the universities’ leadership, including even University Councils which are guilty of making policy in order to comply with legislation but expect that policy to be ignored in practice,” he said.

The Soudien Report is a Report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions commissioned by the Department of Education last year.

Dr Nzimande also raised the fact that universities have neglected the Further Education and Training (FET) college sector in terms of research and teaching.

“There is not enough research by the universities on the FET college sector and yet this is the sector that we are prioritizing to absorb many of our young people who can’t make it to universities,” he said.

“We want to try and fight against this notion that in order to proceed in life university is the only place. We want to turn these FET colleges into colleges of choice and universities must help us, not only to research them but also to train FET colleges lecturers.”

He also announced that he will be calling a meeting of all the chairpersons of the Institutional Forums of the universities later this month as he feels that the role and status of these forums have been “eroded”.

Media Release
Issued by: Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt.stg@ufs.ac.za  
04 September 2009
 

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