Click here to listen to the mp3 advert for The Salvation Army's anti-human trafficking message

Click here to watch the footage taken by News24 at the Long Walk for Rhino's Mandela Day initiative at Robben Island School. (QVC donated Media Liaison to this initiative as part of its Mandela Day initiatives)

 Quo Vadis Communications on a field trip to KwaZulu Natal for client, Siyazisiza Trust.

Victoria Makalima, assistant Director for the Johnson and Johnson Burn Treatment Centre (left) and Roger Crawford, Executive Director, Worldwide Government Affairs and Policy for Johnson & Johnson (back right) happily assisted Nurse Ester Manson and clinical officer William Kalua from Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi throughout their two-week specialised training session at the Burn Treatment Centre at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. The training took place as a result of a public private partnership between the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Johnson & Johnson, and the University of North Carolina in USA. The hospital in Malawi recently opened a burn unit and the hands-on training Ester and William received at the leading burn treatment centre in Africa, will no doubt make a huge difference in the lives of those in need.

This is the first time that South Africa will host the launch of this report, released once every decade.

Inyathelo – The South African Institute for Advancement, in cooperation with the Human Sciences Research Council and the International Social Science Council, will present the WSSR report at the start of the 4^th Annual Leadership Retreat which runs from 11th to 13th October 2010.

Dr Anita Craig, an advisor to the WSSR report's editorial team, described the report as "of enormous significance; it is a survey of the state of our social scientific knowledge."

Among its other conclusions, the report highlights features of various global “knowledge divides”, including:

- Social science from Western countries continues to have the greatest global influence, but the field is expanding rapidly in Asia and Latin America, particularly in China and Brazil. 

- In sub-Saharan Africa, social scientists from South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya produce 75% of academic publications.

- In South Asia, barring some centres of excellence in India, social sciences as a whole have low priority.

According to the report, “social sciences have become so diffuse and widespread that nobody notices their role in understanding and shaping our world and daily lives anymore. Without them, most public policies would simply not exist and many individual and collective decisions would be difficult.”

Nazli Abrahams, who is co-ordinating the 4^th Annual Leadership Retreat at which this report will be launched, commented:

“The Retreat is premised on the fact of an unequal world, where different groups have different development resources at their disposal. The question is: in a world structured by differential access to and control over source of power, what are the roles of institutions in the global South? 

"As South Africans we celebrate the local launch of the international WSS Report at the 2010 Vice Chancellors’ Leadership Retreat, where we will continue to interrogate the relationship between social science, the rest of the sciences, and the world we live in.”

Background on the 2010 World Social Science Report

The International Social Science Council is a subsidiary of the UNESCO and every 10 years it conducts a review of the state of people’s knowledge globally.  This report is the embodiment of the state of social scientific knowledge and it indicates to a nyone involved in education and development issues such as:

- What the global divides are,

- Indicates the inabilities to overcome these divides, and

- How best to respond to the report's findings. 

The report adds that social sciences are needed to understand and influence how humans act.   They are crucial to implement the UN Millennium Development Goals: from reducing poverty to promoting gender equality; and they are needed to face challenges such as climate change.

The 4^th Annual Leadership Retreat will be held from 11 to 13 October 2010 at the Arabella Western Cape Hotel, Kleinmond, near Cape Town. For more information, contact Chantal Meugens on 011 487 0026 or Chantal@quo-vadis.co.za.

Last changed: Oct 05 2010 at 3:21 PM