Programa de pertenencia
The Ubuntu Learning Community (with Prison to College Pipeline) (“ULC”) is a Stellenbosch University-prison partnership established in 2018 – the first of its kind in South Africa. It aims to rehumanise learning by focusing on learning’s social, ubuntu-focused dimensions – collaboration, community-building and connectedness. It conceives of collaborative education as the “practice of freedom” (Paolo Freire) – a tool for transformation and empowerment. An important cornerstone of ULC is the educational partnership between Stellenbosch University (“SU”) and the Department of Correctional Services, whereby SU students and incarcerated students in Brandvlei Correctional Facility study an accredited interdisciplinary short course together behind bars. The objective is to create a safe learning space where “inside” students and “outside” students can learn with and from each other through dialogue and the sharing of experience, as well as to enhance participants’ desire and ability to be agents of social change. ULC also champions the cause of education not incarceration more widely: It has a reintegration component, which offers social and academic support for prison participants post-release. It also has a community outreach component, aimed at educating and sensitising the wider community about incarceration-related issues, including challenging societal stigma against those who have criminal records.

Bio

Dr Mary Nel is a senior lecturer in Public Law at Stellenbosch University, Western Cape, South Africa, where she lectures Criminal Law to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. She holds (inter alia) a Doctorate in Law from Stellenbosch University and a Masters degree in Criminology from Cambridge University. She is the co-founder and director of the Ubuntu Learning Community (“ULC”), a prison-university educational partnership. Leading ULC brings together her twin passions, namely transformative pedagogy / education as the “practice of freedom” (Paolo Freire) and the need to work towards creating a more socially just and equal society.

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