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Cleaning streets and cleaning teeth – these are some the projects
Wits volunteers are undertaking in the spirit of the Inner City
Regeneration Charter.
Hillbrow is being targeted for a clean up
STUDENTS from the University of the Witwatersrand will team up with
Pikitup workers to clean up several inner city streets on Saturday, 6
October.
The clean-up is one of the many services that more than 500
students from the Wits Volunteer Programme will offer at Joubert Park,
in partnership with Region F's health services unit. Information on
health, law, migration and entrepreneurship will also be available.
The initiative is in support of the City's Inner City Regeneration Charter.
"We hope exercises such as this will lead to more regular
occasions on which the City comes together with Wits Volunteers to
improve the physical [environment] and quality of life not only in the
streets and neighbourhoods near to Wits' campus, but across the city,"
says Jack Koseff, the policy and strategy specialist in the City's
department of community development.
"Wits is a natural stakeholder in improving conditions in the inner city."
Providing health services during the campaign is in line with the
charter, which states that the City aims to ensure that all residents
have improved access to health services and outreach programmes, Koseff
notes.
More than 200 students and Pikitup staff will clean Twist,
Claim and Hospital streets, among others. "We hope that the community
will join us," says Thabo Putu, the programme's co-ordinator of Wits'
Community University Partnerships.
At Joubert Park Clinic, fourth-year student nurses will offer
immunisations to children under five; the law faculty, in partnership
with the City's Migrant Desk, will give information to immigrants on
getting legal documentation. "We are trying to encourage migrants to
register with the Migrant Desk," he says.
Senior dental students will also be on hand to offer
teeth-cleaning services in a truck equipped with a dental station that
can accommodate three people at a time. Information on caring for teeth
will be disseminated.
Wits' Reproductive Health Research Unit will hand out
information about the Wellness Centre in Hillbrow, where services
include rape and HIV/Aids counselling. "We want to promote this place,"
Putu says.
Through the exercise, it is hoped students will develop a sense of
responsibility for the university's community. It will also expose them
to the community in which they will be working with after they have
finished their studies, he explains.
The head of Wits' Community University Partnerships, Mohammed
Moola, says: "This is one of a number of initiatives initiated by Wits
university to show [its] commitment to the mayor's Inner City
Regeneration Charter."
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