Combining practical impressions with scientific research

Wednesday started with a lecture by Dr. Kathrin Bischoff, who covered topics such as issues and business-society management, sustainable entrepreneurship and sustainable business models and basics of research methods. In discussions first approaches of the project groups were presented. The groups started to think about their research questions and their proceedings in their papers. There is a lot of work to do for the groups, but they are really motivated to make an impact.

Lecture by Dr. Kathrin Bischoff

Today's student impression by Anna:

"Yesterday we met our project manager for the first time. It was really impressive to see how she and her "health embassadors" create a positive impact on the community of Nyanga. I hope we can provide the help the project needs to give more people access to health care. So today we did a lot of research to build up a crowdfunding campaign and realized how difficult it is to implement a fast financing."

In the afternoon the groups were able to talk to their managers again and define their reserach questions. One of the groups was able to work for the agriculture project and therefore helped planting vegetables in the townships to get to know their work. The community gardens are for everyone who can provide land and wants to grow own vegetabels. The owner of the garden can eat the plants and fruits or even sell them. 

Lindiwe at work

"I‘m Lindiwe, I'm working at Etafeni as a nutrition advisor. I'm supervising the gardens outside the community. We have 118 gardens. We help everyone who wants a vegetable garden. Not only our clients [from the nutrition programme]. Since 2009 I'm working as a nutrition advisor in the nutrition program. It‘s when we started to do the gardens in the society. I‘m glad that every year people from overseas are helping us in the gardens. And they're making our job easy because they're helping us to clean the garden and to establish new gardens. They feel happy to help us, because I see when they're working with us they enjoy what we are doing here in South Africa."

In the evening we watched a movie about Denis Goldberg, a South Afican social campaigner, who was active in the struggle against apartheid and was imprisoned along with other key members of the anti-apartheid movement. 

Movie Night in the Hostel