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09 December 2022 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Barend Nagel
From the left: Rulanzen Martin, Lacea Loader, Dr Nitha Ramnath, and Martie Nortjé.

Another year, another round of national and international awards for the Department of Communication and Marketing’s (DCM) campaigns and projects. This year saw DCM pick up an International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Africa Silver Quill Award of Excellence for Communication Research for Narrative Building Storytelling. This project and subsequent award were in partnership with Development Communication Solutions (DevCom), led by Lacea Loader, Director: Communication and Marketing. 

During the 2022 annual Marketing, Advancement and Communication in Education (MACE) Excellence Awards, DCM won four excellence awards. Dr Nitha Ramnath, Deputy Director: Corporate Relations, won a Silver Award of Excellence for the 2021 Rector’s Concert, and a Bronze Award of Excellence for the 2022 Rector’s Concert. 

Lacea Loader and Martie Nortjé, Manager: Reputation, Brand and Marketing Management, won a Bronze Award of Excellence for the project ‘UFS – Our Story: The building and implementation of a brand narrative.’ Rounding up the UFS’ winning tally was Website Editor, Rulanzen Martin, who won a MACE Bronze Award of Excellence for the 2021 UFS Deaf Awareness Month (DAM) Campaign. The DAM campaign also received recognition during the 2021 IABC Silver Quill awards, where it won a Silver Quill Award of Excellence. 

Awards a perfect opportunity to benchmark 

“The awards give recognition to the communication efforts and endeavours undertaken by DCM as the strategic communication partner at the UFS; it also serves as a perfect opportunity to benchmark against peers and the industry. I am extremely proud of what the team has achieved,” says Loader.  “It is an honour when our projects receive awards, given the calibre of entries submitted for both the IABC and MACE awards programmes. The IABC awards programme is for all industries, while the MACE awards only recognise higher education institutions,” she says. 

For the 2022 MACE Excellence Awards, a total of 95 awards were awarded to 12 institutions from a total of 171 entries.

News Archive

Enactus heeds call to be of service to its communities
2017-01-17

 Description: Enactus Tags: Enactus

The newly-elected vice president of Enactus
University of the Free State, Solomuzi Khati
(third from left) with members of Enactus on
the Qwaqwa Campus.
Photo: Thabo Kessah


The future of South Africa is in good hands if Enactus activities are anything to go by. Enactus is an international non-profit organisation bringing together student, academic and business leaders committed to using entrepreneurial action to improve lives. And the Qwaqwa Campus chapter is doing exactly that – changing lives.

Community engagement
This team of enthusiastic and energetic students have touched the Qwaqwa community in more ways than one through their community engagement activities. One such activity was when they adopted the Team Spirit Centre as their partner for development and empowerment.

“Up to now, the chapter has lived up to its purpose of assisting and uplifting the Qwaqwa community. As part of our programme, we identified a problem that we are currently helping to solve,” said Solomuzi Khati, the newly-elected vice president of Enactus University of the Free State.

Skills development
“We have realised that many centres housing orphaned and vulnerable children, like the Team Spirit in Makoane in Qwaqwa, are not sustainable. Our project introduced a business concept to the centre where we helped to plant vegetables so the owner Mrs Manthabeleng could then use and sell at a later stage,” he said. “In the process, students and Mrs Manthabeleng would develop various entrepreneurial, finance and business skills for future use on top of the centre generating income to sustain itself,” he added.

Appointment of Advisory Board
Khati also revealed Enactus was in the process of inviting business and community leaders into their Business Advisory Board. “This is a group of business people who are recruited to serve as mentors for our team. Typically, a Business Advisory Board is composed of 10-50 business leaders in the community. Board members can keep students informed of current business concerns and trends, provide financial or in-kind assistance for projects, critique annual reports and presentations, and provide networking opportunities.”

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