The Social Impact Community Morning during Welcoming is an opportunity for newcomers to engage in their residences’ or Commuter Student Communities (CSC) volunteering activity to offer their service to a local initiative. As part of the tradition and an essential aspect of the Welcoming program, a day of volunteering takes place every year.
This year, it was held on 7 February with the Centre for the Advancement of Social Impact and Transformation (CASIT) responsible for preparing and hosting the Social Impact “Community Morning”. Each residence and CSC chooses a partner residence and/or CSC (forming a temporary community) as well as what initiative to undertake.
The goal of the Social Impact morning is not only to promote community driven solutions but for new student’s involvement to make a difference in local organisations and in society as a whole. “The university wants to prioritise social impact”, says Melissa Hess, Capri Transformation Officer. Furthermore, the university aims for newcomers to learn how to make a comprehensive impact and build a sense of community whilst volunteering.
This year, the communities were involved in different volunteering initiatives. There were beach clean ups, stationery drives, sandwich drives, sports events at underprivileged schools, toiletry drives for mothers and clothing drives.
Dr Zethu Mkhize, Director of Social Impact and Transformation at SU, says, “There is so much going on behind the scenes” in preparing for the day. Each community’s project is planned and fully resourced with assistance by CASIT and every community submits their social impact plan in October the previous year. This ensures sufficient time to source supplies and make logistical arrangements. Hess works closely with this centre and found it supportive leading up to the morning, saying “it’s a space that you can just keep going back to, to ask for help”.
When asked about the results of the initiatives, Mkhize said, “they went as planned” and received feedback that “at the end of the day, they [students] are fulfilled”. Of course, things don’t always go according to plan. CASIT and the students found that transport and timing were issues on 7 February. Due to logistical delays, the morning was cut shorter than scheduled and transport was not fully reliable. Mkhize said the team could not “rely on our pool [of contacts]; we had to look for private transport”.
Preparation for next year’s Social Impact Community Morning included a reflection session of the team on 25 February and an update on the initiatives’ sustainability progress in April.
By Julian Rael Gordon
