The Saide/Unisa Collaborative Pilot project to develop and pilot a programme for the training of Household Food Security Facilitators has been completed. The project was funded by the WK Kellogg Foundation. Saide's project leader Alice Barlow Zambodla reports on the first graduation and the next phase of the project.
On the 31st May 2012 the first batch of 216 Household Food Security Facilitators who had studied at twenty learning venues all over the Eastern Cape graduated with certificates from the Unisa College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences' (CAES) Household Food Security Programme – seventeen with distinction, at a certification ceremony held at the Quigney Baptist Church in East London. The ceremony served to congratulate them on their achievement and expose them to the outside world for future placements and considerations.
This short learning programme has a community development focus and consists of six 12 credit modules set at NQF level 5. The programme targeted the development of knowledge and competences of people living in rural and peri-urban contexts who were taught to identify and work collaboratively with vulnerable households in their communities and help them improve their food security and nutrition status.
The Executive Manager from the Community Development & Research Programme of the Department of Social Development in the Eastern Cape, Mr Maxegwana, delivered the keynote address at the ceremony. In his address he emphasized the importance of the programme and the need for various stakeholders to make good use of this human capacity that was being developed to support community development initiatives. The excitement of the graduands and their programme promoters was tangible as they sang, danced and applauded in response to the invocations of a student praise singer and the antics of a group that did a role-play on some of the community tasks they had carried out on the programme.
Students received their certificates from Prof Maggi Linington, Unisa Dean of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. Mrs Fransa Ferreira (Academic Programme Leader - Unisa) and Dr Alice Barlow-Zambodla (Project leader – Saide) were also seated on the podium with the Dean and Guest Speaker to congratulate each of the students on their accomplishment. For many of the students (some of whom are in their 30s and 40s), it was the culmination of a dream to acquire a post-secondary qualification. The programme promoters that supported the various groups of students on the programme were also officially recognized and each one was presented with a certificate as well as a gift bag. Mr Vuyo Mtiya (a promoter based in Matatiele) was given special recognition as the promoter who had helped produce the greatest number of passes (at a site) on the programme.
As from 2012, Unisa CAES has now taken over all aspects of programme delivery. Over 520 students situated in Limpopo, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape and the Free State are registered on this programme that is being increasingly seen and reported on as being an important community development model as testified in recent publicity:
In this phase the challenge for Unisa is to find out how best to offer such a community engagement programme in a flexible way within the rather rigid parameters of operation found in such a large distance education institution.
Accessing funding to pay fees associated with delivery of a programme such as this is still a challenge as it does not qualify for the normal government tertiary funding subsidy. All students on the programme in 2012 have been funded in a variety of ways including initial seed funding from Unisa as well as funding grants obtained from funders such as WesBank, government departments and NGOs. Future funding from Unisa is dependent on the outcome of an evaluation of programme effectiveness during 2012. Saide will carry out the monitoring and evaluation role for this new phase.
A number of FET Colleges have also indicated an interest in taking on and including the programme as one of their offerings and the ways in which this might be achieved are being interrogated. If this were to succeed then students would have access to skills funding to pay for the associated fees.
It is also planned that a higher level post-graduate Household Food Security course will be developed and offered by Unisa in future. A course at this level would attract government subsidy. |
