The opening of the programme, which will be offered by The International Social Impact Institute, is timed to coincide with the 31st anniversary of the release of the late President Nelson Mandela, the global icon after whom the University is named.
At this gathering, leaders of the only institution of higher learning to bear Madiba’s name will reflect on ways of strengthening the University’s identity in the public mind, with the values and ideals that are at the core of his vast legacy.
Ultimately, the goal is to better position the University to carry out its mission of disseminating those values and ideals both among present-day audiences and across future generations of South African scholars.
"The capacitation programme with The International Social Impact Institute is important to us to help position our university,” said Nelson Mandela University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sibongile Muthwa.
“The best contribution we can make as Mandela University is to marshal ourselves to be the scholarly articulation of his social and political contribution to the improvement of humanity; to put together institutional arrangements to expand our national, continental and global footprint of scholarly outputs promoting social justice and equality.”
This partnership is the culmination of a series of engagements between the University and the US-based collaborators, the objectives of which are to provide high-level executive development to University staff to capacitate them in the development of concrete resource mobilisation plans, with specific relevance to the USA. The plan will feed into the institution’s Vision 2030, which will reflect the continued focus on financial sustainability.
The educational content of the training programme was developed, and will be presented, by an international team of experts assembled by the New York-based International Social Impact Institute, which offers courses and events in partnership with institutions such as the City University of New York.
The Institute’s founder and Chief Executive, Elizabeth Ngonzi, said she felt privileged to be offering the programme at an institution so closely associated with the legacy of the great Mandela.
Ngonzi, a Ugandan-American Adjunct Assistant Professor of Fundraising at New York University, is the former CEO of Afrika Tikkun USA, which is a Mandela-endorsed non-profit organisation working to end child poverty and youth unemployment in South African townships.
She said she draws much of her own inspiration, on a daily basis, from Mandela’s oft-cited message that “It always seems impossible until it’s done”.
Ngozi will present the programme’s content alongside a host of her colleagues from various US-based North America- and the UK.