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Sustainability and entrepreneurship workshop 2024
The UFS Community Engagement Festival showcased sustainability, entrepreneurship, and social justice initiatives as part of efforts to empower students.

The Engaged Scholarship Office at the University of the Free State (UFS) recently hosted the Community Engagement Festival, a week-long event focused on sustainability, entrepreneurship, and social justice for students. The festival, which forms part of the office’s broader Community Engagement project, showcased various activities and initiatives aimed at educating participants about these critical topics.

A standout feature of the festival, which was hosted on the UFS’s Bloemfontein Campus, was its emphasis on sustainability. Activities included crafting beads from recycled magazines into bracelets and making soap from eco-friendly material. Beyond promoting sustainability and entrepreneurship, the festival also aimed to foster social cohesion by helping first-year students navigate university life.

Gernus Terblanche, an assistant researcher who heads the Engaged Scholarship Office, emphasised the importance of such initiatives. “The Community Engagement project’s focal points are environmental affairs, social justice – where we make use of the hashtag #KovsiesCare – and health and wellness, where the project aims to raise awareness about menstrual health and find ways to assist with sustainable menstrual health,” he said.

The Community Engagement project has grown significantly over the past year, expanding from six members to a community of 200 individuals. Successful projects include a worm farming initiative for income generation, which teaches students how to cultivate and sell worms for composting.

With support from entities such as the KovsieACT office, CTM, the Bloem Shelter and the Bloemfontein National Hospital, the project has gained widespread recognition for its impactful work.

Additionally, the project’s efforts align with the graduate attributes of UFS’s Vision 130, which emphasises skills like communication, critical thinking, and professionalism. Terblanche highlighted the importance of these attributes in shaping well-rounded graduates.

Looking forward, the Community Engagement project plans to sustain its work, with upcoming initiatives like a sewing competition to further engage and empower students within the university community.

News Archive

Moshoeshoe Memorial Lecture to focus on Leadership challenges
2006-03-27

 Lecture to focus on Leadership challenges

 n Thursday 25 May 2006 – Africa Day – the University of the Free State (UFS) will host the inaugural King Moshoeshoe Memorial Lecture in honour of this great African leader and nation-builder.

 Prof Njabulo Ndebele, internationally renowned writer and academic, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town (UCT), will deliver the inaugural lecture at the Main Campus in Bloemfontein on the topic: Reflections on the Leadership Challenges in South Africa.

 “I see the lecture as part of a larger debate on leadership models, particularly the concept of African leadership, as well as the ongoing discourse about nation-building and reconciliation,” says Prof Frederick Fourie, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS.

 According to Prof Fourie, the Moshoeshoe project was launched at the UFS in 2004 to coincide with South Africa’s first decade of democracy and was part of the University’s centenary celebrations, having been founded in 1904.

 “Through this project the UFS seeks to honour a great African leader and demonstrate our commitment to transformation so as to create a truly inclusive and non-racial university,” said Prof Fourie.

 “As the founder of the Basotho nation, King Moshoeshoe is widely credited for his exceptional style of leadership, displaying the characteristics of diplomacy, reconciliation and peaceful co-existence in his efforts to unite diverse groups into one nation,” said Prof Fourie.

 As part of its ongoing Moshoeshoe project, the UFS commissioned a television documentary programme on the life and legacy of King Moshoeshoe. This was completed in 2004 and broadcast on SABC 2 later that year.


Abridged curriculum vitae of Njabulo S Ndebele

Professor Njabulo S Ndebele is currently Vice-Chancellor and Principal of UCT.

 Njabulo Ndebele began his term of office at UCT in July 2000, following tenure as a scholar in residence at the Ford Foundation’s headquarters in New York.  He joined the Foundation in September 1998, immediately after a five-year term of office as Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the North in Sovenga, at the then Northern Province.  Previously he served as Vice-Rector of the University of the Western Cape.  Earlier positions include Chair of the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand; and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Dean, and Head of the English Department at the National University of Lesotho.

 An established author, Njabulo Ndebele recently published a novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela to critical acclaim.  An earlier publication Fools and Other Stories won the Noma Award, Africa’s highest literary award for the best book published in Africa in 1984.  His highly influential essays on South African literature and culture were published in a collection Rediscovery of the Ordinary.

 Njabulo Ndebele served as President of the Congress of South African Writers for many years.  As a public figure he is known for his incisive insights in commentaries on a range of public issues in South Africa.  He holds honorary doctorates from Universities in the Netherlands, Japan, South Africa and the United States of America.  He is also a Fellow of UCT.

Njabulo Ndebele is also a key figure in South African higher education.  He has served as Chair of the South African Universities Vice-Chancellor’s Association from 2002-2005, and served on the Executive Board of the Association of African Universities since 2001.  He has done public service in South Africa in the areas of broadcasting policy, school curriculum in history, and more recently as chair of a government commission on the development and use of African languages as media of instruction in South African higher education.  He recently became President of the Association of the AAU and Chair of the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA).

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel:   (051) 401-2584
Cell:  083 645 2454
E-mail:  loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za 
26 March 2006

 

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