Community Engagement

In the spirit of “Botho” as our name suggests, giving back to the community is a very important objective of the University. All community engagement initiatives at Botho University are coordinated by the Student and Alumni Affairs Department (SAAD). Students are encouraged to participate in communication engagement activities to develop their social traits of being socially responsible and learning the spirit of volunteering. The university over the years and across all its campuses conducted many community engagement activities. For the past couple of years, our Gaborone Campus in Botswana has adopted two villages namely Gakgatla and Kubung in the Kweneng District of Botswana and directed all their community engagement initiatives towards them. The idea was to ensure focus and long term impact has had numerous interventions and initiatives towards this cause with a number of communities and villages such as.

Gakgatla Village Community Engagement Initiatives: In its endeavour to pursue its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) obligations, Botho University adopted a rural (Gakgatla) village about 50 km from Gaborone. The village comprises mainly poor families, living way beyond the poverty datum line and further the youth population in the village is full of school dropouts with high cases of teenage pregnancies. The SAAD has over the past couple of years conducted many focussed interventions for the village of Gakgatla to assist with some of the challenges described.

Kubung Primary School initiative: Botho University adopted the school after the signing of the MOU with the Ministry of Basic Education on the 6th of February 2018 under the Adopt a School Initiative. The project is currently running till the year 2023 with the scope extended to include all contributors to the quality of teaching and learning in the effort to improve learner performance. Since its adoption, the University implemented the following activities:

• Botho University Multimedia Systems students designed the school logo as part of their practice work.
• BU provided academic support to the 2018 Standard 5 Class until they complete Standard 7 in 2020
• Monitor learners’ progress to improve their grades, targeting a Ministry set a target of 80% pass (A, B, C) by the year 2020. This target was exceeded by 3.3% achieving an 83.3% pass (ABC) and lowering Grade D from the initial 42 to 13.9%.
• Supported the School with library resources such as reading books, revision books.
• Provided three (3) remedial lessons monthly.
• Provides sanitary towels to needy students.
• Trained 8 Kubung Primary school teachers on the use of ABACUS, a system that gives a learner an opportunity to hone their own skills and eventually develop expertise in calculations.
• Microsoft Excel training to teachers for improving report compilation and result in analysis and comparison.
• Design and printing of prize-giving certificates and completion certificates for Reception classes and printing of end-of-term examination question papers for all class levels.