Eight students from the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa, are visiting Cornell as part of a two-week program to promote race reconciliation in the African country.

The program, called UFS Leadership for Change, is an opportunity for students of the school who have not been outside of South Africa to explore how multicultural societies function, said Alice Pell, vice provost for international relations and a member of UFS’s advisory board.

The program was started by Jonathan Jansen M.S. '87 after he became the first black vice chancellor of UFS in 2010, Pell said. The program consists of an academic component and a human component, which includes the leadership exchange program, said W.P. Wahl, assistant director for life at UFS. Wahl is also the faculty mentor accompanying the students at Cornell.

Wahl said the program aims to provide South African students with an opportunity to view a racially integrated country. 

“The aim is not only to develop leadership skills but also to break away from stereotypical thinking and remnant past of South Africa — how one can relate inter-culturally and inter-racially,” Wahl said.

The program focuses on the issues of race, reconciliation and social justice, according to Wahl.

“[Its purpose] is to give the students an exposure to a model that works and has workable solutions,” Wahl said. “Give them a different experience that they reflect upon and carry back to UFS.”

Pell said that, after the end of apartheid, the previously all-white UFS underwent a dramatic racial transformation and is now comprised of 70 percent black students.  

The students have been attending various classes related to contemporary women’s health issues, sex and gender, race and ethnicity, entrepreneurship and fair trade. The program focuses on race and social justice but also allows students to attend classes specific to their majors, Wahl said.

Many of the students said that attending a performance by the Ordinary People, a theater troupe that promotes diversity and racial inclusion, was the highlight of their visit, such as Charné Viljoen, a student from UFS visiting Cornell.

“I really enjoyed that all members of our group opened up and asked questions without feeling what other people will think of them,” Viljoen said. “I believe in leading by example. If you lead by being ‘color blind’ and not looking at ones financial status, then others would follow.”

Lesego Majebe, another student participant from UFS, said the experience has led him to develop a greater acceptance of people’s differences.

“I think I will take back an openness; an acceptance of people for who they are,” Majebe said. “We are more similar than different. We should embrace our similarities and learn from our differences.”

Leadership for Change is not limited to Cornell. The program has partnerships with universities in Japan, Belgium, Netherlands and also other universities in the United States, Pell said.

“The way LFC is designed, one group of students gets one kind of perspective in a country and another one gets another sort of perspective in another,” Pell said. “These series of different ideas on how people solve problems helps us benefit from multi-cultural society.”