University of Zululand Community-University Partnership Programme 2010 - 2012

Zululand

Our geographical space

• We are the only residential HEI in an area almost the size of the Netherlands, home to more than 2 million, predominantly young, people, and characterised by poverty, high unemployment, sickness and disease, low levels of education and poor infrastructure.

• Even our immediate community (Mkhwanazi land) comprises 26,000 people living in 5000 households distributed among 15 villages.

The University of Zululand

• A rural-based campus in Ongoye (1960) • A city campus in Richards Bay (2009) • Four Faculties– Arts– Commerce, Administration & Law– Education– Science & Agriculture

• 16,000+ students (2012)• 90% of 2012 intake come from KZN, and 57% of

those from Zululand

• A Dept of Science & Technology (DST) initiative• Administered by the National Research

Foundation (NRF)• Targeting South Africa’s five rural-based

universities• A three-year pilot project 2010 - 2012

Why target ‘rural-based’ unis?

• “Key institutions in shaping social, economic and scientific development within their geographical space”. (DST)

• “the rural-based universities can play a pivotal role in acting as change agents to help residents contribute information to decision-making and to better understand the issues, choices and concerns in the community”. (DST)

• Imbizo 2012 for uni and other stakeholders• 6 uni-com task teams set up– Help Desk– Short-course programme– Workshop programme– Service Learning– Wellness– Projects programme

• Help Desk– Role taken on by CUPP office– Office starting to be seen by students and communities as point of

contact for CE activities• Short-course programme

– Slow progress– Courses on Family Health and Planning, and Training Community

veterinarians in the pipeline• Workshop programme

– Basic financial management and planning for co-operatives– Combined Action Research + Project Management model (ProAct) for

communities– Poultry Management and Vegetable planting

• Service Learning– Community-Uni team not functional. But the concept of

involving students in community work and making it part of the curriculum being promoted by CUPP office through individual contact and orientation sessions with individual staff and students, depts and Facs. (Community?)

• Wellness– Depts of Biokinetics and Sports Science, and Consumer

Science offering testing (sugar, cholesterol, BP) and nutritional info to 2 comms living far from their local clinic. Still trying to get Nursing Science on board and resuscitate their mobile clinic, because Community wants meds!

• Projects programme• Uni’s dept of Ag partnering with a local industry (RBM) to work with a

community on vegetable and poultry production• Two worm farms established 2012 as a research project on organic

farming, in the proj above and in a female co-op• Vegetable planting and poultry management at two local Disability

Centres respectively. (Community capacity-building and ongoing support for Veg and poultry projects is provided by the University Department of Ag’s Farm Manager)

• Introduction of yellow maize into communities to increase zinc intake (Cons Sci)

• Production of low-cost ceramic water filters and ceramic ovens (Hydrology); partnering with local training establishment to train com members in slip casting

Challenges

• What constitutes a Community-University programme rather than simply a collection of projects? (CUPP is part of CE, but CE is more than CUPP)

• Funding, no problem, but shortage of human resources, time and imagination (?) to spend

Implications of the CUPP for the traditional university – community relationship

Jobs

Hand-outs

Study for my

kids

Tenders

How universities see their communities?

How communities see their universities?

Teaching

Research Out-

reach

Where we are

• The aim of the proposed community-university partnership programme might be summarized as being to simultaneously facilitate and effect change in HEIs and their surrounding communities through collective and innovative efforts, arising out of equal, fair, democratic, reciprocal, interactive and sustainable partnerships between stakeholders, which promote the identification of shared goals. (Synthesised from DST and NRF CUPP documentation)

CUPP – a new paradigm?

Implications for university-community engagement (1)

• Doing things with communities (hand-in-hand)• rather than simply for communities (cap-in-hand) • or even worse to communities (community

enragement).• People-centred approach to development– Partnerships respect and promote local perceptions and

creativity– Community members are viewed as knowledgeable and

capable, with assistance where and when appropriate, of solving their own problems

Implications for university-community engagement (2)

Need to work within a Participatory Action Research paradigm, as opposed to more traditional higher education research paradigms

Implications for university-community engagement (3)

• A growing belief in the efficacy of integrating teaching, research with notions of ‘community’ and ‘engagement’….. BUT…..

• A need to move away from the idea of three pillars of HE (teaching, research and CE), which tends to pathologise CE as the orphan child, poor relation, or hind teat.

Teaching Research

Community Engagement

The New Traditional (a three-ring circus?)

Students Faculty

Community/ies and other stakeholders

Engagement

Learning centred Research based

Community focussed

The win-win of Engagement

“Our Space is Our Community”