Professor Ramneek Ahluwalia, had the privilege of signing a MOU with EC DOH and MEC Meth during the recent vaccine drive at Midlands College. The close partnership will assist HH to expand primary health snd support services across all rural, and peri urban campuses within PSET across EC.

The Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Dr Blade Nzimande, will tomorrow, Thursday, 17 September 2020 visit the Zululand District as part of the Cabinet’s deployment of Ministers and Deputy Ministers as District Champions of various municipalities.

Minister Nzimande is deployed to Zululand, along with KwaZulu-Natal Transport, Community Safety and Liaison MEC Bheki Ntuli and Zululand District Municipality Mayor Cllr TD Buthelezi.

The visit will consider amongst others, the district COVID-19 response plans, interventions to eradicate gender-based violence, infrastructure and skills development in the region.

Minister Nzimande will during the visit also launch the Higher Health District Campus Health and Wellness roving fleet of mobile clinics to provide primary health care to underserved TVET, CET colleges as well as rural and disadvantaged University Campuses. This service will ensure that the Department of Higher Education, Science and Innovation increases its capacity to provide health services to our post school education and training institutions.

The District Development Model (DDM) is a new integrated planning model that government is using to institutionalise an integrated, district-based, development approach aimed at fast-tracking service delivery and ensuring that municipalities work together, and are adequately supported and resourced to carry out their mandate.

The DDM is a vehicle to ensure that service delivery is refocused and implementation strengthened through a well-coordinated and coherent national programme of action. In this regard, the team of experts will contribute positively to the implementation of key interventions. This integrated plans implemented will go a long way to eradicate inefficiencies and duplications caused by spheres of government operating in silos.

Members of the media are invited to join the Minister, the MEC and the Mayors as follows:

Date:            Thursday, 17 September 2020
Time:            10:00
Venue:         Zululand District Municipality, Council Chambers, B400, Galane Street, Ulundi

Members of the media are advised to confirm their attendance by contacting Ishmael Mnisi at 0660378859, Seema Ramnarain at 083 388 3100.

Views raised by youth delegates during “She Conquers” dialogue at HEAIDS National Youth Confeence: click here

Youth delegates at the HEAIDS Conference confronted government about a range of issues during the “She Conquers Dialogue” From economic challenges, lack of healthcare services at TVET colleges to sexual and gender based violence, they left nothing out. Watch the entire dialogue here

Ms. Managa Pillay, HEAIDS’ Technical Advisor in the CEO’s office is currently attending the 2018 UN Women Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces Global Leaders Forum in Edmonton, Canada. Edmonton is co-hosting the event with the United Nations, which connects more than 250 people from 25 countries in an effort to make public spaces safer around the world. Managa Pillay is representing HEAIDS with the aim to strengthen our organisations’ continuing work in the field of women empowerment and gender based violence (GBV). She brings her technical expertise from her extensive work in managing the drafting of the first ever GBV policy for institutions of higher learning.

The keynote speaker at the conference, author and facilitator Jay Pitter, spoke about the connections between urban planning and social justice. Her key recommendations outline that:

1. Statistics need to be linked to the real life stories and experiences of women
2. There needs to be sustainable bridging of domestic and public spaces
3. She emphasised that street based public education is effective as opposed to closed boardrooms.

The conference will be wrapped up today.

The University of Cape Town (UCT) officially launched its Inclusivity Policy for Sexual Orientation. “The policy promotes UCT’s commitment towards a culture that has zero-tolerance towards all forms of discrimination” states Dr Sianne Alves (Director of the Office for Inclusivity & Change, UCT). The aims to ensure consistent engagement between students and staff and create an environment that respects and celebrates inclusion of sexually diverse staff and student on campus.

Under the policy, academic staff and tutors are encouraged to use content and language that is inclusive, neutral and non-discriminatory. The policy suggests, as an example, that instead of using language that assumes every household has a mother and a father, it would be more inclusive to refer to parent/s; or talk about diverse families, which will signal that heterosexual and queer partnerships are equally valid.

In support of UCT’s transformation mandate the policy makes reference to four functional areas of the university namely: teaching practice, communication and media, institutional culture and service provision.

Find policy here