UJ honours humanitarians
WESTDENE – University of Johannesburg honoured its humanitarian through a formal ceremony with a red carpet and a fine dining table.
The University of Johannesburg hosted a Community Engagement Award ceremony on 5 November to honour humanitarians within the institution.
The awards were as follows:
- Best community engagement volunteer for the year – Thembi Ntsanwisi
- Best UJ community engagement student structure of the year – UJ Chess Masters Society
- Best UJ community engagement project (3rd prize) – Schalk van Heerden for the multi-departmental project in Mozambique.
- Best UJ community engagement project (2nd Prize) – Professor Natasha Erlank and David Thelen from the Faculty of Humanities for their Sophiatown Project.
- Best UJ community engagement project (1st prize) – Dr Pieter Els from the Faculty of Health Sciences for their Riverlea project.
“We are very excited; we have worked extremely hard for this because we provide a lot of projects to the community of Riverlea,” said Professor André Swart, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences.
The department provides health services to numerous communities and they won the award for their integrated work in Riverlea.
“We provide numerous services, including free ultrasounds for women in the community,” he said.
“The community knows when we will be there and they always come for our help.”
UJ Chess Masters Society project manager Chris Seoka said, “We went to schools in the townships and we taught the pupils how to play chess.”
According to Seoka, some of the pupils thought chess was daft and did not understand how the game stimulates critical thinking.
“If you can think outside the box, the sky is the limit,” he said.
The guest speaker of the event was Thulani Madondo, founder of the Kliptown Youth Programme.
Madondo is an example of a true humanitarian.
He grew up in a poor neighbourhood and he has made moves to get out of poverty and also help other Kliptown children do the same.
Madondo helps more than 460 pupils in his area with food, homework assistance, mentoring, sports programmes, computer literacy and performing arts.
Because of his work, he was in the top 10 CNN Heroes and in the Mail and Guardian’s top 200 most promising young South Africans.
Details: Unathi Twala 011 559 6619.
