Page 11 - Transformation Report

The portfolio is working within the context of global, regional, and local questions of our times that have, in the contexts
of protracted socio-economic and environmental emergencies, merged with our private, public, and institutional lives.
One of these ‘emergencies’, the COVID-19 pandemic, emerged amidst impoverished global and local politics and is
superimposed onto structurally-anchored plagues such as poverty, socio-economic inequality, gender-based violence,
racism, environmental degradation, and so on. These have profound implications for the ETP, in particular, and the University
in general, even as we know that these challenges call for a ‘glocal’ (global and local) collective effort. Our moral obligation
is to craft pathways for praxes, within our action-spheres, to contribute to this communal intent.

The budding experiments steered by the principles of the Hubs of Convergence (HoC) are generating learnings on
what may be possible. The work of the Community Convergence Workstream (CCW) and the HoC, like never before,
brought together skills, capacities, and connections from across the University in various projects to work with marginalised
communities. The HoC has made significant progress since its initiation event in 2019. It responded with great agility to
the pandemic, coordinating the CCW that generated and engaged projects in areas such as sustainable food systems,
material relief, anti-gender-based violence and community journalism. Its work is an exemplar of the kind of processes
re-imagining engagement might require. Networks have grown and connections, across Faculties, disciplines, civil society
organisations, government, and the private sector, have strengthened and become more impactful. The CCW projects
have shifted from urgent interventions to projects with long-term potential. The community-based food systems project has
gained momentum and catalysed the establishment of the Nelson Mandela University Food Systems Working Group. The
masks distribution project has been reconceptualised as a sewing project to provide sewing skills and business knowledge
to participants, and the community journalism project, GBV forum, and the civil society engagement forum project have all
continued to grow and flourish throughout 2021.

Over the past two years the ETP entities, projects and programmes have worked to establish new and revitalised affiliations,
systems of working and means of accountability. Together, they represent a wide range of expertise, knowledge and
approaches to research and praxis, but with a shared commitment to building a transformative, responsive university.

11 TRANSFORMATION REPORT