Student Affairs and Welfare

Student Welfare

 

Amongst a number of services the Student Affairs Department is mandated to provide, student welfare is very critical. Therefore, the department ensures that Women’s University in Africa can access physical, social and psychological, support to foster smooth and effective their learning.

Physical Support

Students’ physical well-being is an enabler for effective learning throughout their learning duration. The Department with the assistance of SAVELIFE medical Aid offers medical aid support to students for their physical and mental welfare. Each student can use their SAVELIFE medical cover to access selected health facilities and general practitioners. A specific medical doctor is assigned to each satellite campus while Harare campus is serviced by a clinic located within the campus. The medical aid covers general primary health care, xrays and dental cover. The department ensures that students’ campus life is also physically active by providing outdoor and indoor sports where every student can engage in competitive sports with other institutions. These ensure the physical well-being of students who take part in these sporting activities. The university offers a variety of sports disciplines such as soccer, netball,

basketball, volleyball, handball, cricket, hockey, table tennis, lawn tennis, pool, darts, chess, karate and golf. Through sports, individual and team participants have competed at various levels which include interuniversity games as well as across tertiary institutions within the country, in Southern Africa at a continental level. Because we are a sports loving institution, students participating in sporting events can experience injuries and SAVELIFE assists in these instances or refers such students for more specialised care.

Psychological Support

The Department offers psychological support to students through counselling and referrals. Students face an array of psychosocial problems including drug and substance related problems. These include students’ living realities of addiction to alcohol, drugs and other illegal substances. Some struggle with reintegration into the university after rehabilitation. The ever present mental struggle to relapse to drugs and substance abuse is also a reality for students who would have come back to university after rehabilitation. Some of the challenges also stem from academic pressures, failure to meet financial demands of university tuition fees and family related challenges. A large percentage of our students are young people who are invariably engaged in love relationships within and off campus. Often these relationships trigger off psychological challenges such as depression and in worst cases even suicidal thoughts.

The department relies on the Chaplain (who is housed in the department) as well as university counsellors in every campus to mitigate these challenges. Counselling sessions are available both physically and virtually. The counsellors schedule counselling sessions with students in need and refer them for rehabilitation and further counselling services when need arises. The chaplain and counsellors often have to call parents and guardians (with students’ consent) to help the students overcome their challenges. The university also makes room for fledgling counsellors through peer counselling to assist with students who need these services. Peer counsellors are easier to access and students find it relatively easier to approach them for assistance in matters they consider sensitive. To complement all these efforts, the university has regular as well as vibrant health and psychosocial awareness campaigns/activities in all campuses every semester. These cover sexual reproductive health rights, HIV and Aids, mental health awareness, drugs and substance abuse, gender based violence among others.

Social Support

Social support is one of the most underrated but essential service for a student’s well-being. This can impact negatively on the student’s progress as well as success in their studies. For these reasons, the department caters for the social support for students in time of bereavement. Parents or guardians of a WUA student who passes on are entitled to a bereavement fee as a token of condolences to the family. In a typical Zimbabwean tradition or Ubuntu, the department joins the family in the funeral proceedings while the chaplain may conduct the burial service in the absence of a family pastor. The department also makes follow up visits or telephone calls to the family after the burial. The department also does home and hospital visits for students and WUA staff member as moral support. The Chaplaincy’s department augments these efforts through activities targeted towards spiritual support or growth for both the students and staff. The department has created platforms for often marginalised groups to increase their visibility in the institution. Differently abled students and pregnant students fall into such groups whose needs may escape mainstream needs of the student body. Whatsapp platforms for each of these specific groups records the unique needs these students’ experiences for purposes of identifying institutional gaps for students’ social support.

The university does not promote siloed operations and in this vein, the department complements other university departments such as the Gender and Diversity Centre and academic faculties’ efforts in combating discrimination of any student by gender, ethnic, religion or other variables. The department is also aware of potential sexual harassment and sexual violence among students and the rest of the university community. In line with the institution’s Sexual Harassment Policy, the Student Affairs Department also has an officer dedicated to receiving and processing complaints of a sexual harassment or violence nature. These can be escalated to higher levels where an investigating committee can be constituted to further assess and protect students who would have been exposed to this.

Loading...
Number Of Shops: 0 PRINT

    Store Direction

    GET DIRECTIONS

    Use my location to find the closest Service Provider near me

    Description

    549 Arcturus Road, Harare Phone: 08688 002924

    Quick links

    Webmail

    myWUA

    Women’s University © 2024