By Siyamthanda Mnyiwana
“When doing community engagement work, it is important not to see yourself as a saviour,” says Phemelo ‘PJ’ Hellemann, a lecturer at the Department of Primary and Early Childhood Education at Rhodes University.
Helleman has been involved in community engagement since her early years. “In my high school, we had an element of community engagement, it was embedded in the way we do education and the way we do life, and we used to call it the Ubuntu Club,” she said. “This experience made me realise the importance of integrating community engagement into education. “Coming to Rhodes and hearing about community engagement felt like I was continuing the work”.
Helleman always understood that education should have an element of community engagement, she then embarked on a journey of progressing that by involving herself in community projects. “My involvement in community engagement is not of charity but is of integration,” she said.
Helleman believes that whatever she does should always have a benefit for the greater good. “I knew that the course I was teaching, which was physical education, needed a community engagement element. I thought that the teachers need to learn how to play tennis because I remember when I was a teacher, I was unable to teach any extramural sport, so I learned tennis during that time”.
Helleman then thought of paying it forward and doing it in an environment where the students she teaches can also teach somebody else. She thought of service learning because it was the thing that made sense.
Helleman’s involvement in community engagement is not limited to that. She recently wrote a play called A Childhood in Chalk which was on the National Arts Festival programme this year. The play, a collaboration with the Drama Department won an Ovation Award. “My research with the play is aligned with the school and trying to improve the understanding of history,” she said.
Helleman said encountering hopeful individuals in the community, especially in education, reassures her that there are still good people who want to make a positive impact. For instance she experienced this support when in the first month of the school year Andrew Moyakhe School had no teachers and people in the community volunteered to come to the school and do something.
