The kick-off for Rhodes University’s Community Engagement (CE) Week was the opening of the CE exhibition by Dr Saleem Badat on Monday morning and a talk by keynote speaker, Kojo Harris, on Monday evening, as well as the announcement of the winner of the Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Community Engagement Award.
The kick-off for Rhodes University’s Community Engagement (CE) Week was the opening of the CE exhibition by Dr Saleem Badat on Monday morning and a talk by keynote speaker, Kojo Harris, on Monday evening, as well as the announcement of the winner of the Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Community Engagement Award.
Badat, in his opening words, stressed the fact that as a university, Rhodes needs to be excellent at its core tasks of teaching, learning and research in order to embark on good quality community engagement. “Because communities deserve the best,” he said, and went on to speak about the importance of partnerships and the need for community engagement activities to be mutually beneficial. A number of departments were displaying their work and Dr Badat pointed to these as examples of good community engagement practice, involving reciprocity as well as the application of academic resources.
Kojo Parris heads up the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Wits University, and his talk focused on the growing band of social entrepreneurs that are straddling the divide between the private sector and the government sector and providing innovative solutions to service delivery and other pressing national issues. He urged Rhodes University “to culture a competent and patriotic elite that will drive nation-building”, and to develop young leaders that will strive for both social and economic development. He pointed to the fact that mechanisms such as the internet, cell phones, telemedicine, etc are providing new opportunities for doing that, and even suggested that the University should help to “transform the site of Makana’s epic struggle into a ‘Social Enterprise Valley’.” He also cautioned that South Africa could not develop significantly unless we pay attention to social cohesion and building a shared set of values.
At the conclusion of Monday evening’s event, Prof Alfredo Terzoli from Rhodes University’s Computer Science Department was named as the recipient of the VC’s Distinguished Community Engagement Award for 2011. Terzoli has been responsible for a number of projects that involve engaging with communities in the Eastern Cape to provide and utilize internet connectivity and computer skills, even in remote areas such as Dwesa on the Wild Coast.
CE Week at Rhodes has constituted a full programme of events, ranging from talks, debates and seminars to the CE Exhibition and tea for the elderly.
