Prof. Michelle Esau

he Scholarship of Engagement is evidenced through our entrepreneurship education ecosystem. This ecosystem promotes students’ (a), employment opportunities and entrepreneurial capacities, and (b), consciousness for social, political, economic, and technological development within communities. Our approach, not only encourages students to engage with stakeholders within communities, but also requires them to form partnerships, to devise sustainable solutions to society’s problems. Operating within ZoneLearning@UWC, the Small Business Clinic provides an experiential learning hub, where students can engage with entrepreneurship-related activities, which direct their hearts and minds towards entrepreneurship as a viable opportunity for:

• employment and income-generation • support to owners of small and micro-enterprises

The training intervention programme, initiated by Professors Isaacs and Hall, on the Theory of Change, is another example, which illustrates the faculty’s efforts towards the scholarship of engagement. This programme fosters close working relationships between researchers and senior government officials on the continent, through the Network of Excellence on Land Governance in Africa’s (NELGA) short course training on land governance.

The Faculty’s Women’s month events, hosted annually in August, further fosters a collaborative spirit of partnership among a cross section of significant stakeholders (including business owners), towards adressing problems that face entrepreneurs, in general, and women entrepreneurs, in particular.