The Mandela Rhodes Foundation partnered with the Sustainability Institute to offer a programme for their second year master’s students. 2024 was the third year that we partnered with MRF on 2YP, to guide their master’s students to apply what they learned in their first year, in real-world contexts. With leadership and sustainability pillars at its core, the programme challenges them to consider what their contribution is in enabling a fairer and more abundant future.
In transdisciplinary teams, they design, plan, and implement projects that aim to create a positive socio-environmental impact in their chosen context. Their journey lasted from March to August and ended in an interactive exhibition where scholars showcased their projects to the public.
Through this programme of innovation, a ‘small is beautiful’ perspective was encouraged to activate grassroots approaches to systemic change. Questions about how to put into practice what was learned, what would it look like to draw from co-design principles and what would it mean to be a sustainability leader in Africa encouraged exploratory thinking.
Through in person modules and virtual touch points, the students were grouped and identified a challenge area they’d like to address. Topics like food security and energy poverty were at the forefront and they worked with members of the community, so everyone was able to contribute something to the journey.
Key skills that participants strengthened:
- Working in complexity and with contextual awareness
- Design thinking and creative problem-solving
- Transdisciplinary teamwork
- Critical and futures thinking
- Project management and implementation
- Public speaking and presentation
- Reflexivity and self-awareness
- Sustainability literacy
