In March 2018, Patience Shawarira and Phindi Sithole spent three months on a student exchange participating in a course called Global Challenges and Sustainable Development, at Jönköping University in Sweden. The course was offered under the Linnaeus-Palme programme which is funding this staff/student exchange programme between the Environmental Learning and Research Centre at Rhodes University and Jönköping University. Patience says that this was a great opportunity to learn and experience life in a first world country and that she learnt a lot from the diverse and intelligent group of international scholars that she attended the course with.
The Global Challenges course discussed global challenges in the light of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and other topics included social justice, environmental justice, Education for Sustainable Development, land grabbing, water access control and privatization, climate change, atmosphere and energy. Patience particularly enjoyed an envisioning exercise where students planned what they would like to see in their cities 30 years from now. The exercise provided an opportunity to think critically about sustainable cities. The opportunity to compare visions of sustainable cities between Europe and the Global South proved to be an interesting exercise. Students also got the opportunity to experience sustainability practices in Sweden such as the wide use of clean and renewable energy and the huge strides made in the country to adopt strategies for sustainable consumption. Patience described the trip as "a great eye opening experience"!