by Thobani Mesani, Rhodes University Community Engagement Office
The 2020 SRC has placed at the very heart of their mission, the cultivation of humanity – encouraging students to use their social capital to contribute to community development through the building of mutually beneficial partnerships with the Makhanda community.
We started the year with a record number of 2 025 students engaging on a regular basis with the community through service learning and volunteer programmes. These large numbers had everything to do with this SRC team inspiring and encouraging students to become a part of community engagement at the University. Rather than allowing the pandemic to paralyse this incredible surge of involvement, this team sought alternate ways to contribute to society.
They facilitated virtual workshops with various halls on community engagement and environmental sustainability. Also, for the first time in history, the SRC ensured CE visibility through inclusion at various O-week events and even started a series of webinars to address the challenges faced by students when volunteering such as language barriers and time management amongst other concerns.
The SRC launched the #RUGrowing project, which aimed to provide skills and eco-friendly ideals of producing their own food through vegetable gardens in schools and in the community. They built on this idea by launching the #PlantedTheSeed, #RiverRescue, #BeachCleanUP and #PlasticFreeJuly amongst other initiatives.
The SRC team brought an energy to the student body which had a clear purpose, fully grasping the CE principles of building relationships and mutually beneficial partnerships, their hand in ensuring good practice was commendable.
The SRC has been led by two remarkable team players, getting behind and driving community-engaged learning in ways we could not have imagined - this evening we salute the leadership of Katlego [Mphahlele] and Leboghang [Nkambule] – mature, principled and very dynamic and recognize them for a special award of excellence.