Latest News Archive
Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
12 June 2024
|
Story Lunga Luthuli
|
Photo supplied
![]()
Richard Molefe, a final-year BCom Investment Management and Banking
student at the University of the Free State (UFS), was recently elected uncontested as the National Chairperson of the Black Management Forum (BMF) National Student Chapter. The BMF aims to empower managerial leadership among black individuals in South Africa. Molefe's election signifies a step towards inclusive leadership structures that reflect wider societal values.
In an exclusive interview, Molefe shares his vision for youth empowerment and his plans for the Student Chapter's endeavours.
“The Black Management Forum’s programmes of development and advancement of managerial leadership and socio-economic transformation have exposed me to leadership opportunities that enhance my potential and aspirations. The opportunity is an indication that I have done something right, but I must constantly remind myself that I have not arrived,” said Molefe.
In his one-year term of office, Molefe wants to ensure that national structures of the Student Chapter exist and are functional, key pillars – promoting leadership, managerial leadership development skills, and entrepreneurial skills development in higher education institutions.
CDS receives another international grant from the NIH
2015-12-11
 Dr Carla Sharp |
The Centre for Development Support (CDS) is partner to another international research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. The new project follows an earlier project funded by the NIH, which focused on the mental health of orphans and vulnerable children.
The new project is to focus on investigating possible improvements in the mental health and cognitive development of orphaned and vulnerable children aged between seven and eleven years, by means of improved community-based care in the Mangaung Township area in Bloemfontein. The project will stretch over three years and has a budget of approximately R10 million.
“We shall use the Mediational Intervention of Sensitizing Caregivers (MISC) approach and it will be applied by community-based organisations,” says Dr Deidre van Rooyen, Acting Director of the CDS.
MISC applied by caregivers has produced good results elsewhere in the world. “This is the first time MISC will be tested by community-based organisations,” says Prof Lochner Marais of the CDS, who is also the principal investigator in South Africa.
“In addition to working with four community-based organisations in Mangaung, Childline Free State will also be actively involved in the project,” Marais added.
The project is being conducted in collaboration with Dr Carla Sharp as principal investigator at the University of Houston, and Prof Michael Boivin (an international expert on MISC) at the Michigan State University. Dr Sharp was recently appointed visiting professor at the CDS.
“It is indeed a great privilege to be working with the CDS on yet another project,” Dr Sharp remarked, also noting that “the project is preliminary in nature and could evolve into a much bigger research project in future”.