Dr Jerome Slamat, Senior Director of Community Interaction at Stellenbosch University, was the keynote speaker on the opening night of Community Engagement Week at Rhodes and treated the sizeable audience to an informative, “warts-and-all” account of how community engagement plays itself out at his institution.
Dr Jerome Slamat, Senior Director of Community Interaction at Stellenbosch University, was the keynote speaker on the opening night of Community Engagement Week at Rhodes and treated the sizeable audience to an informative, “warts-and-all” account of how community engagement plays itself out at his institution.
Stellenbosch University makes provision for different types of community engagement that are variously integrated with teaching and learning (this includes short course offerings); integrated with research (including community profiling and baseline studies); projects that integrate teaching and learning, research and community engagement or take the form of volunteerism and public service.
A new initiative has seen the support staff at "Maties" also becoming involved in community engagement.
Slamat said his office played a linking or “match-making” role and provided support to academics through the provision of a database, the facilitation of partnerships, and a short course on Service Learning. His office was also engaged in partnerships with local municipalities, provincial government structures and other higher education institutions.
A joint project with Stellenbosch Tourism had seen them developing alternative community tourism routes in the area. Students at Stellenbosch who engage in community projects had to go through a process of writing a proposal, applying for funding, researching and selecting a community partner, and reflecting on their interaction.
In other words it was a developmental process that built capacity in the students, as well as benefiting the partners.
Currently there was a Leadership and Community Development short course being offered through the Frederick van Zyl Slabbert Institute that was a pre-requisite for being a student volunteer leader. Slamat admitted that Stellenbosch University had a somewhat clouded past, but felt there was reason to celebrate because, as he said, “We are making headway in redefining relationships, repositioning the University and maximising access.”
Preceding the talk by Slamat was Jai Clifford-Holmes, a Mandela-Rhodes scholar and one of the driving forces of Galela Amanzi, a campus-wide student initiative that deals with issues of water supply in Grahamstown.
Clifford-Holmes shared an insightful journey in which he and the organisation had progressed along the community engagement spectrum of charitable volunteering and merely providing water tanks, to serious scholarly engagement with the critical issue of clean water.
“We moved away from a narrow perception of material deprivation to the richness of a range of relationships and partnerships,” he said.
Clifford-Holmes also described how engaging with community issues enhanced the university experience to provide an education and not merely a degree.
