Thriving in a global pandemic

Let’s be honest, the pandemic pulled a number on university societies. Apart from the people you meet in class, societies, and clubs are a great way to meet new people who have similar interests as you and perhaps establish friendships that last for a long time, but that is hard to do when you can’t meet in person with those people. Technology is all great but meeting in person is more intimate and real.  The purpose of this article is ironically meant to give praise to how much Zimsoc has benefited in some way from how everything is happening online. This will be done with the focus on two of our recent big successful events. Our opening event where we hosted Fadzai Mahere a Zimbabwean human rights lawyer and politician and our Alumni event where we hosted Ralph Mupita a UCT alumnus and group president and chief executive of the MTN Group.

ATTENDANCE

For the two events we had quite a great attendance and for that we say kudos to the internet. For the first event we had over one hundred people joining the event which was held on Microsoft teams. For the alumni event the numbers also remained quite high as well. In the past these events were only open to members of the society, but in both our opening event and the alumni event we made the event open to everyone. As a result, many people managed to join and benefit from the knowledge and wisdom which Ralph and Fadzayi had to share in these separate events. I do not think we would have made an impact as large as this if not for the Webinars. We probably would have had to worry about the cost of bringing either Fadzayi or Ralph to UCT, but the pandemic has forced us to be more creative and I can safely say many people are benefiting from this, both Zimsoc society members and non-Zimsoc society members.

FEEDBACK

Both events received great feedback from those who attended. Some were re sharing their favorite moments of the interviews and some were just sending us messages thanking us for organizing the events, something that we appreciate and gives us hope that we are indeed changing the narrative and impacting people’s lives no matter how small.

Mitchel Muza, Marketing and Communications Director

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