{"id":6800,"date":"2025-10-22T15:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T13:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/?p=6800"},"modified":"2025-10-23T14:10:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T12:10:41","slug":"cesar-regional-workshops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/cesar-regional-workshops\/","title":{"rendered":"CESAR \u2013 regional workshops"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Cape Town, 22\/10\/2025: From <strong>9\u201314 October<\/strong>, representatives of the CBTA took part in the regional workshops of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/projects\/cesar\/\">CESAR<\/a> (<strong>C<\/strong>ommunity <strong>E<\/strong>ngagement in Higher Education in the <strong>S<\/strong>outhern <strong>A<\/strong>frica <strong>R<\/strong>egion) project at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cput.ac.za\/\">CPUT<\/a>) in Cape Town. While the first part of the event took place at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cput.ac.za\/about-cput\/campuses\/granger-bay-campus\">Hotel School Granger Bay Campus<\/a>, the venue changed to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.saretec.org.za\/\">SARETEC Belville Campus<\/a> on Monday. The workshops brought together project partners from Flensburg University of Applied Sciences (<a href=\"https:\/\/hs-flensburg.de\/en\">FUAS<\/a>), Namibia University of Science and Technology (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nust.na\/\">NUST<\/a>) and the CPUT to exchange experiences and strengthen community engagement across higher education institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The CBTA team \u2013 Prof. Dr. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/hs-flensburg.de\/hochschule\/personen\/muellerdi\">Dirk Mueller<\/a><\/strong>, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/hs-flensburg.de\/hochschule\/personen\/jordt\">Stefanie Jordt<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/hs-flensburg.de\/hochschule\/personen\/kuehn\">Martin Kuehn<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 actively contributed throughout the week. The opening sessions focused on communication, dissemination, and project reporting, led by <strong>Martin Kuehn<\/strong>, who presented strategies for internal coordination and digital collaboration tools within CESAR. <strong>Stefanie Jordt<\/strong> supported the discussion on planning the next project phase, while <strong>Dirk Mueller<\/strong> contributed to sessions on programme design and evidence-based reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Subsequent days explored stakeholder engagement and management collaboration, with interactive group work and partnership mapping exercises involving government, industry, and community representatives. The discussions highlighted how closer alignment between university management and local stakeholders can enhance the social impact of community engagement initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <strong>research and dissemination<\/strong> <strong>day<\/strong>, coordinated by <strong>Dirk Mueller<\/strong>, placed strong emphasis on transdisciplinary research and the development of abstracts for the upcoming \u201cEngaged Research Forum on SDG Partnerships.\u201d Participants refined joint research ideas addressing SDG-related topics and presented draft abstracts for collaborative publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A particularly memorable part of the week was the excursion to the <strong>!Khwa ttu Nature Reserve<\/strong> on the <strong>heritage, history and cultural settlement day<\/strong>, where participants engaged with local community leaders to learn about heritage preservation, cultural identity, and inclusive community development. This field visit illustrated how community engagement can connect academic learning with local traditions and sustainable livelihoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The final two days focused on skills development and social entrepreneurship. <strong>Martin Kuehn<\/strong> led sessions on integrating technology and AI into teaching and research, while <strong>Dirk Mueller<\/strong> and <strong>Stefanie Jordt<\/strong> co-facilitated workshops on understanding and strengthening the social entrepreneurship ecosystem. Together with collegues from CPUT and NUST, they guided participants through group work sessions on embedding social innovation and entrepreneurship into ongoing university projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Topics across the week ranged from integrating the <a href=\"https:\/\/sdgs.un.org\/goals\">Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)<\/a> into curricula and research agendas to enhancing university-community collaboration through service learning and social innovation. The workshop series concluded with joint reflections and presentations of institutional strategies, underlining the shared commitment of all partners to advancing SDGs 6, 7, 11, and 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Funded by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.daad.de\/en\/\">DAAD<\/a> under the SDG Partnerships Programme, CESAR continues to foster cooperation between academia, industry, and local communities in Southern Africa \u2013 promoting capacity building, knowledge exchange, and sustainable partnerships across borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-10-09-at-12.16.52.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"461\" src=\"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-10-09-at-12.16.52-1024x461.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6782\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-10-09-at-12.16.52-1024x461.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-10-09-at-12.16.52-300x135.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-10-09-at-12.16.52-768x346.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-10-09-at-12.16.52.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cape Town, 22\/10\/2025: From 9\u201314 October, representatives of the CBTA took part in the regional workshops of the CESAR (Community [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":6786,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6800"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6821,"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6800\/revisions\/6821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.wi.hs-flensburg.de\/africacentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}