But Ubuntu, a joint program between Fordham, the University of Pretoria, and the Jesuit Institute of South Africa has shrunk that divide over the last six years. Recently, the program has been reimagined and restructured.

“Like all programs, it’s evolved. I have worked closely with our partners in South Africa and with others at Fordham to make sure the experience is an authentic and powerful one for our students,” said Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

“I also want to ensure that the communities with whom we engage have a positive experience.”

Learning By Being With Others

Last spring, the 10 students who lived in South Africa from January to June had their experience shaped by the renewed emphasis on the Ignatian principles that shape Fordham’s mission.

“We want to educate our students for social justice, for well-educated solidarity, for understanding how to be men and women for and with others. You get that by being with others, being in their homes, walking down the dirt roads with them, talking to them, and accompanying them,” Mast said.

“That’s how you develop solidarity, and begin to see God in all people, by first seeing them as humans, in their suffering and their joys.”

In addition to taking classes at the University of Pretoria, Ubuntu students participate in community projects. The emphasis on learning with and from the community is part of the program retooling, as are guided reflections with staff from the Jesuit Institute of South Africa.

Ubuntu director Booi Themeli, Ph.D., a lecturer in economics, said the program changes are meant to help students better understand that they’re not just tourists.

“They understand that the program is about them growing up as students at a Jesuit school, and seeing themselves as partners with communities,” he said.

Themeli interviewed each student before their departure, and he said this year’s cohort was phenomenal, in no small measure because two members were humanitarian studies majors, a degree offered in tandem with the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs.

An Intense Focus on Community Projects

Emma Wilhoit, a rising junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill and a native of Shawnee, Kansas, was one of them. She worked with the social and training services organization Kamcare. Her initial goal was to introduce and distribute reusable sanitary pads to women living in an informal settlement (similar to a shantytown) on the outskirts of Pretoria. That evolved into something much better. Soon, instead of buying the sanitary pads, Wilhoit collaborated with the women so that they could design, sew, and sell the pads themselves.

“The women were ready, willing, and able to respond to my project. All I had to bring were the ideas and the resources, and from there they completely took it into their own hands,” she said.

“Now women in the community have employment and are paid a living wage to produce pads, which are given out through the program.”

Joergen Ostensen, a native of Hope, Maine, and fellow rising junior who is majoring in communications, said he considered Ubuntu key to his career.

“In order to be a journalist and someone who’s able to participate in meaningful discourse in the world, I feel like you need to understand the realities that people face in other parts of the world,” he said.

Ostensen tutored a class of third-grade students in reading for his service project. At the end of the year, he gave each of the 25 students a book he’d written that was inspired by the wildlife safari the Ubuntu class had gone on. He said he hoped the book would encourage reading and expand the students’ worlds a little.

“One of the tragedies of Apartheid was that it was illegal for black people to leave the area they were assigned to, so they couldn’t even go on a safari in the country they live in,” he said.

“It’s not illegal anymore, but if you live in a township and make minimum wage, which is like $1.50 an hour, or you’re unemployed, which is 40 percent of the population, it doesn’t really matter. They’re not really allowed to move around, because they don’t have the financial resources.”

Pausing to Reflect

Wilhoit and Ostensen both felt they benefited enormously from the guided reflections in the program, which is offered in association with the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.

“Poverty in Africa is very different from anything a student might experience in America. We saw it first hand in ways that could be hard to handle and hard to process. Reflection was useful because we were able to unload it and unpack it and realize how to handle it in the future,” Wilhoit said.

“The village where we lived was really nice, so it was quite a jarring sight to go from our service sites back to the village. It really brought up questions, like, ‘Why am I here and they’re there?’”

Ostensen recalled a few instances that he said were difficult. During a workshop, a fellow student was asked in earnest by a local woman what she should do in a situation where she needed to use her body to get a promotion.

“That was a real conversation she had with someone. I mean, what would you do? Together we could figure out what to say, or just cope with the fact that people are living in a world like that,” he said.

Equally as profound, said Wilhoit, was the intense bond the students formed with each other.

“When we were there, we were all living in the same place, going to the same classes, going on the same trips,” she said, noting that the spirit of Ubuntu can be expressed as “I am because we are.”

“Each one of us is who we are because of the way that the group is. I think I’m going to miss them and being constantly surrounded by these people and experiencing the bond in that way.”

Applications for the spring program are due by October 1.

Dressed in green-and-yellow South African jerseys, the group cheered on the New York City Football Club as it went head-to-head with the Seattle Sounders.

“In South Africa, everyone loves [soccer],” said Sharlotte Valoyl. “People play the vuvuzela, and if their team wins, they have a party or will go around campus singing.”

For Mmane Boikanyo, who works as a marketing manager for TuksSport, the University of Pretoria’s sports department, the outing, along with a previous visit to the NBA headquarters in New York earlier this month, allowed her to take notes on how sports are marketed in America. She hoped to use what she learned from those experiences to better promote her school’s sports department.

“Sports marketing in America is quite aggressive,” she said. “There are a lot of products, merchandise, and high investments in digital media. In South Africa, we haven’t caught on yet. We’re mainly focused on talent acquisition and operations.”

Though it poured during the soccer game, the South Africans didn’t let the rain deter them from having a good time. The group put on their ponchos, sat on the bleachers, and shouted excitedly with other soccer fans every time the ball came close to the goal post.

“This group of cohorts have so much energy,” said Booi Themeli, Ph.D., director of the exchange program. “When people come to a new country for the first time, they often feel overwhelmed, confused, or intimidated. But this group is so enthusiastic. They just dived right in.”

Cultural immersion

The five-week exchange program, a partnership between Fordham’s International Political Economy and Development (IPED) program and the University of Pretoria, gives South African students an opportunity to study at Fordham while Fordham students study at the University of Pretoria, and learn about emerging markets. This year’s New York group will visit private and government institutions such as the World Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, ICBC, and Bloomberg. The group will take trips to notable attractions around the Tri-state area and nearby cities, like Boston and Washington, D.C., to further immerse themselves in American culture and business.

“I want to work for the World Bank or the U.N., so the visits to financial institutions have been helpful,” said Pieter Scribante, who is studying economics. “It has been interesting to see how people who studied economics and finance are applying what they learned in the real world, and using their degrees.”

Mapule Mashapha, who is pursuing a masters in educational psychology back home, said taking courses in family counseling and theories of interpersonal trauma at Fordham is giving her an overview of what to expect as a counselor.

“A lot of what we do in South Africa is theoretical so there’s often no practical guidance of what to expect when you actually begin your career in counseling,” she said.

Basisipho Jack, a graduate from the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Johannesburg, South Africa, said the exchange program has helped her to build connections with other students and engage with the Fordham community. Fordham, like the leadership academy, is a very close-knit place.

“The academy was a sisterhood. We all knew each other’s background and got to know each other like family. Fordham feels like that kind of community.”

Ashley Daswa, the nephew of South Africa’s first Catholic martyr, Blessed Benedict Daswa, said the opportunity to study at a Jesuit institution like Fordham is allowing him to keep his late uncle’s vision alive. He said his uncle always encouraged him to “study hard and be a leader.” A welcome message from Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, was also source of inspiration.

“Father McShane told us that we come from a very great country, and that we are the future,” said Daswa, who works at an investment bank in Cape Town. “It makes you feel like you’re a person who is not only going to make a difference, but is also destined for greatness.”

“This is the sixth year we have partnered with Fordham,” said Bland, a fellow South African. “If you think of how this program started with just nine students—and now we have more than doubled that—it’s pretty great,” said Bland.

Bland himself got a toehold in the United States’ banking industry as an exchange student; he thus understands the value of the program firsthand.

“You get a taste of the city and you see things you’ve only seen on TV, like these buildings,” he said of the New York skyline. “It demystifies a lot of this and shows that if you have the confidence and you work hard, you can do it too.”

The program is a partnership between Fordham’s International Political Economy and Development (IPED) program and the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Students from Fordham go to South Africa to study the economics of emerging markets, while South African students come to New York to take courses in Political Risks and Strategic Financial Management. As part of their New York experience, they also familiarize themselves with the American way of doing business, said Henry Schwalbenberg, PhD, director of IPED. The partnership between Fordham and the University of Pretoria has also grown to include the Ubuntu program, which is a semester-long academic service learning and exchange program for undergraduates.

This summer’s cohort has a unique twist in that 15 of the students are young working professionals from South Africa’s private and government sectors, who are studying alongside nine graduate students from the University of Pretoria.

“It’s a great opportunity to be in the same program as them,” student Keaoleboga Mncube said of the professional students. “It’s a bit of a challenge back at home to get into the workplace, so getting to know them gives us an advantage in networking for job opportunities.”

Some of the South African professionals were comparing notes with their American counterparts. Ropfiwa Sithubi is an audit manager with KPMG in Cape Town. She said that she was surprised by the diversity of the American bank employees, but she wasn’t referring to the way the term is usually employed—she meant diversity of educational background.

“In South Africa, most people choose their career from an early age and that’s what they study, but here we have met people who have studied other subjects, such as engineering, and now they are in banking,” said Sithubi.

Booi Themeli, PhD, associate professor of economics and exchange program director, said that interacting with policy and decision makers outside of the classroom feeds back into the curriculum. Many of the students said that they found their American professors to be well versed in the theory that they study in South Africa, but that the American professors provided more practical knowledge and used more case studies than their professors at home.

Schwalbenberg said that there is also a very profound purpose to the program that should not be forgotten.

“South Africa had a political system of apartheid and people were left out of the economy, and now we want people who were left out to be in the education system,” he said. “That usually takes a generation to change things, but we want to do it faster.”

“Our program is a small part of something big.”

As they prepared to travel to South Africa in January for this semester’s Ubuntu service learning program, Fordham students looked forward to a unique opportunity: helping to shape the legacy of Nelson Mandela in his own homeland.

The death of the former South African president and Nobel Peace Prize winner in December has prompted not only an extended period of national mourning, but also widespread debate about the meaning of his life, noted Booi Themeli, Ph.D., a Fordham economics professor and director of the Ubuntu program.

“The passing on of Nelson Mandela is a huge turning point for the country,” said Themeli, who grew up in South Africa under apartheid. “[This] will be the time when everybody is trying to say, ‘Oh, this is the legacy of Nelson Mandela. This is what Mandela wanted to see in our communities.’ So Fordham has a unique opportunity to be part of that change.”

This is the third year of the Ubuntu program, one of many collaborations between Fordham and the University of Pretoria begun in recent years.

Students were inspired to be serving in South Africa in the wake of Mandela’s passing.

“I think that South Africa’s really refocused on (Mandela’s) messages, so I think it’s a great time for us to be there,” said Anna Lynott, a Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH) junior who expected that the Ubuntu program would draw more attention this time around.

In the words of FCRH junior Bryan Galligan, “Just because he’s dead, I don’t think that means that he’s stopped leading, and I think every South African feels that responsibility on their shoulders. I think it’s a call. I’m really looking forward to being able to be there and help respond to that call, if you will.”

In between courses at the University of Pretoria, Fordham students will take part in a variety of service learning projects related to computer literacy, early childhood development, education, recycling, agriculture, or other areas of need.

The students will make excursions to sites from Mandela’s life, such as Robben Island prison, where he was held for most of the 27 years he spent in captivity. They’ll also visit Mandela’s former home in Soweto, where they will hope to understand more about Mandela and the people who played a major role in his life, said Stephen Freedman, Ph.D., provost of Fordham.

They include Peter Magubane, who worked as Mandela’s photographer, and his daughter Fikile Magubane, South Africa’s ambassador to Spain, who has been instrumental in shaping the Ubuntu program, Freedman said.

“Fordham is proud to be taking part in this historic moment of transition, when the people of South Africa are mourning Nelson Mandela, honoring his memory, and pondering his legacy,” Freedman said. “We expect this semester to be an exceptionally rich time for our students to pursue service learning in South Africa, given that the example set by this noble, selfless world leader will be so fresh and prominent in the public mind.”

He emphasized the importance of the support from the program’s partners, the Jesuit Institute of South Africa and the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. During a visit this month, he planned to meet with the foundation’s executive director—the Rev. Mpho Tutu, daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of Mandela’s closest friends—about making the program even more enriching for students and further integrating the Ubuntu program into South Africa’s communities.

Freedman said he also plans to meet with the Jesuit institute’s leadership about emphasizing the program’s spiritual aspects—particularly the spirit of reconciliation exemplified by Mandela, and its importance for resolving conflicts around the world.

A few of the students said they’re interested to see how their perspectives on Mandela compare with those of South Africans. Junior Erica DePalma looked forward to learning how South Africans view the forgiveness and reconciliation that Mandela practiced when he became president.

“Not everyone in the country [was]able to experience that firsthand, so it is going to be interesting to see what their perspective is,” she said.

And junior Jeffrey Coltin looked forward to being in South Africa during this spring’s national elections, in which different parties are both claiming to carry the message of Mandela.

“He was not just a president but a revolutionary figure, and a father figure for the country,” Coltin said.