Outreach Initiatives
The students and staff of the CTHB and the Tree Protection Co-operative Programme
(TPCP) are involved in various “outreach initiatives” which serve to educate and bring
knowledge and information to people whether they be budding scientists or not. The
initiatives touch the lives of learners (both primary and high school), students at HEI’s and
also the general public. Some of these so-called “outreach initiatives” also overlap with
what we have described in the section marked “Services provided”.
The University of Pretoria runs a programme designed to actively engage students in
the City of Tshwane Municipality. This programme is known as “UP with Science” and
is run out of UP’s Science Centre (http://www.upwithscience.up.ac.za/). The CTHB was
again involved in both the Grade 10 and Grade 11 programmes in 2010 and 2011. (See
“Nuggets – Popular Articles” for more details on the UP with Science activities)
MRYE (Mpepu Rural Youth Encouragement) Outreach Programme
The CTHB has supported a special outreach project since 2005/22006. This outreach
initiative was started by a group of very inspired and enthusiastic 3rd and 4th year
engineering students at the University of Pretoria, all of whom came from disadvantaged
rural backgrounds and were aware of the problems of poverty, poor education and
deprivation facing these learners in the rural areas. The group’s mission is to preach the
message that education would provide the key to enable hard-working learners to rise above
their situation and open up opportunities for them to continue with tertiary education and so
embark on a successful career.
The group alerts learners and educators to the subject and grade requirements of HEI’s,
courses offered at different institutions, career opportunities and funding opportunities to
study further. They are equipped with registration forms, HEI prospectuses and bursary
and loan forms. Regular feedback on the value of their visits has been received from the
Principals and staff of these schools, regional inspectors and parents. The group also offers
assistance to these students when they arrive at the HEI’s as part of an orientation process.
MRYE also fills a mentorship role as part of the mentorship programme at the University
of Pretoria (UP). At UP, the MRYE group is also trained by the Student Recruitment and
Retention section to whom they report on the top 10 achievers at each of the schools
visited. Although the CTHB is the sole large sponsor of the MRYE group at the moment,
MRYE continues to endeavour to find other sponsors.
Exhibitions and visit to Schools
FABI and the CTHB are invited to exhibit their research and science at official functions.
Examples over the last few year have been the Annual 2010 South African PhD Project
Conference organised by the NRF in 2010; the National Science week in Piet Retief in 2010
and 2011; the CoE days at Stellenbosch University in 2010 and the University of Cape Town
in 2011 and Scifest a few years ago amongst others. The CTHB student body is actively
involved in community engagement. Visits are paid to schools in the Pretoria area, or
learners visited FABI. FABIans present talks to the students at the local school or to the
learners from the local schools and spark their enthusiasm for science through the use of
interesting experiments.
2010 MRYE NEWS |
2005-2008 |
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