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UFS hosts festival promoting sustainability and entrepreneurship

10 April 2024 | Story Okuhle April | Photo SUPPLIED

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

The challenges of local governance highlighted at the JN Boshoff Memorial lecture

2014-08-26

Mr Kopung Ralikontsane
Photo: Jerry Mokoroane

The annual JN Boshoff memorial lecture was hosted by the Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences in conjunction with the Department of Public Management on 21 August 2014. Mr Kopung Ralikontsane, Director-general of the Free State Provincial Government, presented the keynote address, ‘Challenges Facing Local Government in Service Delivery’.

In his opening remarks, Mr Ralikontsane gave the background of the South African municipal structures, the legal framework within which they operate and the challenges they are currently facing. He added that “local government is a sphere at the coalface of service delivery and if this sphere fails, South Africa would have failed to be a developmental state.”

He said the Free State provincial government has made great strides in developing local communities, with millions of rands invested in various development projects such as water and sanitation, electrification, roads and storm water structures, community facilities and solid waste disposal.

Local government is still faced with other challenges, though. He pointed out that public employees are subject to greater scrutiny and increased demands from citizens. As a result, they have to provide better services, but within stricter limits on resources. Conflict arises due to changing relationships between public servants and citizens, downsizing, restructuring and contracting out of government services and activities.

Despite the various structures implemented by local government, municipalities are serving an ever-growing population in an economic decline. Regulations have been put into place to devise credible Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) to improve municipal infrastructure, build competent management teams and strong operations and increase technical capacity for effective delivery of services.

Mr Ralikontsane invited students to join local government in crafting innovative solutions. “We know the problem, but we need to encourage you to join forces with your local government and tackle them.”

Mr Kopung Ralikontsane has served in local government for two decades and also serves as Head of Administration of the Free State Government and as Cabinet Secretary.

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