Students enrolled in the Community-based Project Module (JCP) of the Faculty Engineering, the Built Environment and Information Technology facilitated a brick making course at Stanza Bopape Community Centre. The students requested community members, who have the skills to make bricks, to transfer their skills to other community members. The student’s task were to organise and facilitate the course. They had the help of brick making champions in the community as well as from three students from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) who have done their community engagement field work in South Africa.

The students, Josua de Villiers, Petrus Fourie, Thomas Gray, Jesse Parvess and Brandon van Veenhuyzen indicated that the project gave them a very good experience in basic project management. They indicated that the community project showed them the value of effective teamwork in a multi-cultural environment. They also learned that the key to organising a project is communication, and that the individual must be willing to adapt to the situation to generate an outcome that is mutually favourable.