There is a lot more to Rhodes University than just producing graduates.
For years, everyone from young children to the elderly in Grahamstown and beyond have benefitted from a community engagement (CE) initiative that provides the marginalised with life-changing opportunities and the university with vital research.
Although community-based university research has been around since the 1970s, Rhodes CE director Di Hornby yesterday said restructuring of post-apartheid education has seen it become a vehicle to accelerate transformation.
“Community-based research is making a marked difference in tackling some of the local social and economic problems faced.”
Earlier this week the university’s Siyahluma Project Group – which has also provided much needed work for five local women sewing up reusable sanitary pads – was awarded vice-chancellor Dr Sizwe Mabizela’s distinguished community engagement award.
Besides benefitting local schoolgirls who were missing weeks of school a year because they could not afford pads, the initiative also provided research into other reasons why they did not go to class when menstruating.
Yesterday, 144 early childhood development (ECD) practitioners from preschools in Grahamstown, Keiskammahoek, Bhisho, Hamburg and Debenek were given certificates from the university after completing a specially designed two-year course while still working with children in their communities.
The skills the ECD practitioners pick up doing the course will both benefit marginalised children by providing them with better chances to attend university one day as well as provide the institution with valuable research. According to Hornby, there are 106 organised programmes of community engaged learning that involve working together to co-create knowledge and address “pressing social issues” in a sustainable way.
Making the award to Siyahluma, deputy vice-chancellor for academic and student affairs, Professor Chrissie Boughey, said the multi-disciplinary university team had used their skills, knowledge and expertise to forge mutually respectful, beneficial and socially significant initiatives and partnerships with the local community.
The group canvassed 1100 Grade 11 schoolgirls across the province over the lack of reliable and hygienic menstrual products, problems they encountered at school and taboos surrounding the subject which had not yet been properly researched in South Africa.
“The project’s successful collaboration with key community based partners highlights the benefits of forming relationships and taking a participatory approach to solving community- based issues. Siyahluma is an exceptional programme that exemplifies how research, teaching and learning, and community engagement can be harnessed to better understand and move towards solving social inequality in South Africa.”
Besides the groundbreaking research, the initiative has also created jobs for five foster mothers from Grahamstown Child Welfare who approached the university with the idea of starting a social enterprise to produce re-usable sanitary products.
“One of the findings of the research was that access to modern, reliable and hygienic products at an affordable price is a challenge for many girls.”
Taught how to sew up the pads, the reusable menstrual kits they make are distributed at local schools in Grahamstown along with educational materials developed by the research team.
Boughey said the initiative is a winner for all involved.
The women have a sustainable sewing business, the girls do not have to miss school as the pads are distributed free or at a minimal charge and the university has research that makes a difference.
“While the programme deals with an inherently complex and difficult set of issues, the theoretical and practical approach adopted by the research team and their partners to tackle these issues is simple enough to allow for a model that could and should be replicated across South Africa.” — davidm@dispatch.co.za