The Student Forum will be a policy-orientated short programme where participating students will be taught by Stellenbosch Faculty. Students will be given the opportunity to think about development from the perspective of a developing country, and come in contact with development initiatives begun by Stellenbosch University. 

With many development initiatives the micro and macro levels thereof are not seen and studied together. Through the Student Forum, Stellenbosch faculty will discuss and illustrate the various forms of interaction between the above two levels. For this reason the three academic coordinators come from diverse, but related academic fields: Community Participatory Development, Political Economy and Development Economics.

The academic offering has been designed and put together in such a way that the points of interaction between the above study fields are clearly illustrated. This being said, a clear effort has been made not to reduce the above academic fields to one another.  By doing this the complexity of the developmental process is also acknowledged.

In 2012 the focus will be on the macro political and the economic variables of development, and how they influence development on the community level. The community will, however, not only be studied as a not-active participant in its own development. The community will rather be seen as an active participant and enabler of its own development. For this reason we have included Community Participatory Development as an academic course in the Student Forum.

The enablers of the Student Forum will be:

Creating the platform:

• The Postgraduate & International Office (Stellenbosch University)
• The International Offices of our Institutional Partners
• Community Based Partners

Responsible for the Academic Offering:

• Different Academic Departments from Stellenbosch University