The College of Law Community Engagement focus centres on prioritizing the importance of utilising the resources and capacities of the University in community development initiatives and collaborative partnerships to fulfil three strategic commitments:
- Redefining the scope and extent of community engagement in the context of ODL by means of .aligning CE initiatives with flagship themes to promote engaged research and innovation, to promote expertise related CE initiatives to enhance tuition and curricula development and to foster graduateness
- Building an enabling environment for community engagement through the establishment of systems for efficient implementation and reporting of CE initiatives, improve processes for project inventory, reporting and financial management and developing mechanisms of monitoring, evaluation and assessment
- Utilisation of CE opportunities to enhance Research and/ or Teaching and Learning practice within the University. As such the College of Law is committed to the development of inter-college alliances with respect to the development of synergised Community Engagement initiatives across UNISA. The College identifies partnerships with communities with specific needs which can be addressed through the expertise of the College in the areas of teaching and research.
The community engagement initiatives of the College of Law are also aligned with the Millennium Development Goals in terms of the following:
- Building Safer Communities
o Improve public safety
o Reduce crime
o Improving, facilitating and expanding individual and collective access to law and justice
- Building a capable and developmental state
o A state that is capable of playing a developmental and transformative role.
o Improve Community and Public governance
o Reduce corrupt
o tion and improve public accountability
- Nation Building and Social Cohesion
o Contribution toward equal opportunities, equal rights and non-discrimination
o Improve Community trust
o Improve community connectedness and participation
Grow social capital within communities
Visionary goals:
- Collaborative Engaged Community Research and Tuition
- Law and Justice Change Agents Collaborating with Communities
- Impactful and Relevant Law and Justice Community Projects
Community Engagement projects are clustered under flagship themes: