Students honoured for their good service

Going the extra mile: Disability Service hosted a function to praise its group of student volunteers.

The personal satisfaction Gugulethu Hlekwayo gets from helping people not only motivated him to sign on as a volunteer at UCT's Disability Service, but also inspired him to stay with the unit for a full six years.

For his outstanding commitment, Hlekwayo, an honours student in history, has received the inaugural UCT Disability Service Volunteer Long-Service Award, presented to him on 5 May at a ceremony to thank the unit's brigade of 80 volunteers.

Since 2005, Hlekwayo, who praised the unit for being so well-organised, has helped out as a reader and a scanning and editing champion, assisted with interactive teamwork, and is now part of a selected team of note-takers for a hearing-impaired student. Other students who were fêted "for not sitting on the Jammie Plaza in their spare time but going an extra mile to help disabled students" were the scanning and editing champions, the advocacy/outreach volunteers, members of the Disabled Students Movement, and the volunteer team that was involved in the recent Blind Soccer event, as well as volunteers involved with note-taking.