Born in the village of Mvezo on the
banks of the Mbashe River in the Eastern Cape, Mr Mandela has carried through
his life an unwavering passion for South Africa’s children, and a particular
concern for the lives of children living in the rural communities of our
nation. Over the past
two years, the University of Fort Hare has come together in partnership with
the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Eastern Cape Provincial Department of
Education to establish a Nelson Mandela Institute for Rural Education and
Development (NMiRED), based at the University of Fort Hare. The Institute
represents a trans-disciplinary space within the University to focus on some of
the most intractable questions facing rural education and development. The
Institute is accountable to a Board of Directors, and constitutes an entity of
the Faculty of Education.
The vision of the Institute is to
create sustainable,
vibrant rural communities united by a spirit of learning and purposive
collective action through which community members – unleashed from the
limitations of the past - become the creators of their future and the drivers
of their own development. There are four aims of the organization:
Aim 1: Leadership
Development: To support school and community leaders, in all of their
forms to create schools and communities that live up to the legacy of Mr.
Mandela.
Aim 2: Human
Centered Development: To build sustainable, human centered methodologies
for rural education and community development.
Aim 3: Research
and Public Dialogue: To create a space for scholarship linked to
development action; to facilitate research and public dialogue to address some
of the most intractable challenges facing our nation and world.
Aim 4: Demonstration:
To create a series of demonstration sites to harness social hope and demonstrate
through practice the possibilities for rural education and development.
The Institute focuses on community
development and education as problems that cannot be separated. Rather than
separating the fields of education from concerns such as social development,
local economic development, and agriculture, the Institute seeks to establish a
trans-disciplinary space to consider new solutions to challenges old and new.
In 2007, the Institute continues to
support Masters students in the area of rural education and development,
primarily through the M Ed programme of the Faculty, facilitates an
inter-faculty support programme for post graduate students interested in rural
development, and is piloting a programme to support local school and community
leaders to become effective change practitioners.
