SHAWCO praised for 70 years of good work

Congratulations are in order: From the left VC Dr Max Price, Faith Brown, SHAWCO director, and DVC Prof Crain Soudien, Chairman of the SHAWCO Board, celebrated the student-run organisation's 70th anniversary with staff and volunteers at Glenara.

SHAWCO volunteers and staff were lauded for their efforts to improve the lives of others last night at a cocktail function hosted by Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price in celebration of the organisation's 70th anniversary this year.

Price expressed his appreciation of the great responsibility shouldered by SHAWCO workers taking on the "massive operation of thousands of people moving in and out of the townships every week with lots of people in the communities having come to depend on" the services provided by the organisation.

Professor Crain Soudien, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Chairman of the SHAWCO Board, echoed Price's sentiment, adding that the student volunteers' commitment was "an absolutely, phenomenal feature of UCT life over the last 70 years".

SHAWCO traces its roots back to a student clinic established in 1943 in what was then a slum area known as Kensington-Windermere, now Kensington and Factreton. Andrew Kinnear, a UCT medical student, together with Dr Golda Selzer from the Groote Schuur Pathology Department co-founded the organisation.

According to Soudien the communities SHAWCO serves provide "a space for interpretation and translation" of the book knowledge students receive at the university. He also believed that SHAWCO volunteers leave the university with "a deeper understanding of what it is that they are making of their professional futures".