Professor Vhonani Olive Netshandama
Professor Vhonani Netshandama is the director of community engagement at the University of Venda (UniVen). She began her career as a nurse, practicing at several hospitals in Limpopo and Gauteng between 1986 and 1995. In 1995, she joined Unisa as one of two black, female, junior lecturers in what is now the department of health studies.
She holds bachelor’s, honours and master’s degrees in nursing from Unisa. She completed her doctoral degree in nursing education at the University of Johannesburg in 2003. In 2009, Netshandama joined UniVen’s department of advanced nursing sciences, always asking herself what science could do for people. For many years she worked as a nurse educator, at the interface between the university and the community, exploring community-based science education models.
Netshandama was involved in several multi-pronged projects in which students and professors in different disciplines engaged with communities to improve their quality of life and achieve better health outcomes. Among other things, she was instrumental in the inception and diversification of a collaborative project with the University of Virginia’s Center for Global Health in the US. Through the project, entitled “Water and Health in Limpopo”, more than 100 undergraduate students from both UniVen and the University of Virginia and a significant number of postgraduate students received degrees.
The professor helped facilitate the establishment of Mukondeni Filter Factory, a water filter factory. This was a spin-off collaborative project of the University of Virginia, UniVen, and Mukondeni Pottery near Elim in Limpopo, where the Mukondeni potters were trained to produce ceramic water filters. Rotary International sponsored the project.
Recently, she completed a community-based design study to assess the acceptability of a nipple shield for the administration of medication to infants. While it may take a few more years to get the product to market, the strength of Netshandama’s contribution is that she insisted on taking the time to engage the caregivers and mothers in rural areas to provide input into the design of the nipple shield.
Netshandama has successfully supervised five PhDs and 21 master’s candidates. Together with her students, she has published 40 peer-reviewed articles and more than 50 conference presentations.
Her current NRF-funded research projects focus on learning respectfully from indigenous knowledge holders about community-centred innovation, science-community interface modalities, and mental health promotion and healing, using appreciative inquiry approaches.