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10 March 2022 | Story Anthony Mthembu | Photo Unsplash
Food security
The No Student Hungry team gearing up to start distributing food parcels to the selected students.

The UFS is one of the many institutions of higher learning where food insecurity is an active issue. However, the No Student Hungry Programme is one of the initiatives launched at the university to assist in fighting food insecurity at the institution.

The purpose of the programme

Since its inception in 2011, the initiative has assisted many students in acquiring a healthy meal. Additionally, the Food Environment Office also hands out food packages, so that students can continue to achieve academically. “We are trying to develop a healthy environment for students and make it easier for them to have a nice and healthy meal,” stated Annelize Visagie, who heads the
Food Environment Office at the UFS. The Food Environment programme is spread out on all three campuses, each with its own facilitators. Furthermore, the programme mainly caters for students who are not funded by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) but who are excelling academically. The abovementioned students apply for assistance online, and a list is then drawn up of students who receive assistance for the year.

Alternative solutions to keep the initiative running

On the Bloemfontein Campus, the No Student Hungry Programme will be catering for 200 students in the 2022 academic year, assisting them with a daily nutritious meal. Additional food parcels are also handed out to provide further assistance.  “We give food parcels to the students on the list every Tuesday and Thursday at the Thakaneng Bridge,” Visagie highlighted. However, she argues that catering for the student population through this programme can be a challenge, as the demand for assistance is growing rapidly and the ability to assist is limited. The programme relies on partnerships and sponsors to assist the student body. In fact, the coordinators of the programme currently have a memorandum of understanding with
Tiger Brands according to which they deliver around 100 food parcels for distribution.

In addition, the coordinators have put in place alternative measures to ensure that they can provide more food to students. “The Kovsie Act Office, in partnership with the Department of Sustainable Food Systems and Development, has started a food garden where healthy and nutritious produce are grown, in order to add value to the distribution,” she indicated. Although the programme can only assist to a point, students who are in desperate need of assistance are never turned away. In fact, the Social Support Unit at Thakaneng Bridge usually assists students with food vouchers for a maximum of four days.

A commitment to teaching healthy eating habits

The programme is not only committed to curbing food insecurity, but also to ensuring that students have a healthy and balanced diet. As such, a booklet is being issued by the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics in collaboration with the Department of Sustainable Food Systems and Development, which contains ways in which students can make a healthy meal using some of the ingredients offered in the food parcels.

 “We want to teach students how to eat healthy in the cheapest way, because they don’t have a lot of money to buy expensive food products,” Visagie argued.

News Archive

Gender bias still rife in African Universities
2007-08-03

 

 At the lecture were, from the left: Prof. Magda Fourie (Vice-Rector: Academic Planning), Prof. Amina Mama (Chair: Gender Studies, University of Cape Town), Prof. Engela Pretorius (Vice-Dean: Humanties) and Prof. Letticia Moja (Dean: Faculty of Health Sciences).
Photo: Stephen Collett

Gender bias still rife in African Universities

Women constitute about 30% of student enrolment in African universities, and only about 6% of African professors are women. This is according to the chairperson of Gender Studies at the University of Cape Town, Prof Amina Mama.

Prof Mama was delivering a lecture on the topic “Rethinking African Universities” as part of Women’s Day celebrations at the University of the Free State (UFS) today.

She says the gender profile suggests that the majority of the women who work in African universities are not academics and researchers, but rather the providers of secretarial, cleaning, catering, student welfare and other administrative and support services.

She said that African universities continue to display profound gender bias in their students and staffing profiles and, more significantly, are deeply inequitable in their institutional and intellectual cultures. She said women find it difficult to succeed at universities as they are imbued with patriarchal values and assumptions that affect all aspects of life and learning.

She said that even though African universities have never excluded women, enrolling them presents only the first hurdle in a much longer process.

“The research evidence suggests that once women have found their way into the universities, then gender differentiations continue to arise and to affect the experience and performance of women students in numerous ways. Even within single institutions disparities manifest across the levels of the hierarchy, within and across faculties and disciplines, within and between academic and administrative roles, across generations, and vary with class and social background, marital status, parental status, and probably many more factors besides these”, she said.

She lamented the fact that there is no field of study free of gender inequalities, particularly at postgraduate levels and in the higher ranks of academics. “Although more women study the arts, social sciences and humanities, few make it to professor and their research and creative output remains less”, she said.

Prof Mama said gender gaps as far as employment of women within African universities is concerned are generally wider than in student enrolment. She said although many women are employed in junior administrative and support capacities, there continues to be gross under-representation of women among senior administrative and academic staff. She said this disparity becomes more pronounced as one moves up the ranks.

“South African universities are ahead, but they are not as radically different as their policy rhetoric might suggest. A decade and a half after the end of apartheid only three of the 23 vice-chancellors in the country are women, and women fill fewer than 30% of the senior positions (Deans, Executive Directors and Deputy Vice-Chancellors)”, she said.

She made an observation that highly qualified women accept administrative positions as opposed to academic work, thus ensuring that men continue to dominate the ranks of those defined as ‘great thinkers’ or ‘accomplished researchers’.

“Perhaps women simply make realistic career choices, opting out of academic competition with male colleagues who they can easily perceive to be systematically advantaged, not only within the institution, but also on the personal and domestic fronts, which still see most African women holding the baby, literally and figuratively”, she said

She also touched on sexual harassment and abuse which she said appears to be a commonplace on African campuses. “In contexts where sexual transactions are a pervasive feature of academic life, women who do succeed are unlikely to be perceived as having done so on the basis of merit or hard work, and may be treated with derision and disbelief”, she said.

She, however, said in spite of broader patterns of gender and class inequality in universities, public higher education remains a main route to career advancement and mobility for women in Africa.

“Women’s constrained access has therefore posed a constraint to their pursuit of more equitable and just modes of political, economic and social development, not to mention freedom from direct oppression”, she said.

Prof Mama concluded by saying, “There is a widely held agreement that there is a need to rethink our universities and to ensure that they are transformed into institutions more compatible with the democratic and social justice agendas that are now leading Africa beyond the legacies of dictatorship, conflict and economic crisis, beyond the deep social divisions and inequalities that have characterised our history”.

She said rethinking universities means asking deeper questions about gender relations within them, and taking concerted and effective action to transform these privileged bastions of higher learning so that they can fulfil their pubic mandate and promise instead of lagging behind our steadily improving laws and policies.

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  
02 August 2007
 

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