Doctor of Hearts - The Biography of Bongani Mayosi · Student Voices Archive

Doctor of Hearts - The Biography of Bongani Mayosi

Doctor of Hearts - Book Launch

The UWC Library, in collaboration with the Division of Student Development and Support (SDS), the UWC Writing Centre, and the Centre for Student Support Services (CSSS), marked the launch of Doctor of Hearts: The Biography of Bongani Mayosi with a week-long series of events starting on 19 August 2024.

The library held a whiteboard campaign throughout the week, during which students interacted with quotes and questions from the book. This activity attracted more than 70 students' participation and generated feedback and discussion about the book and the week’s events.

Thought-Provoking Quotes and Questions

For this whiteboard campaign, we wanted to use quotes from the book itself as a means to engage students with the subject matter and get them thinking. to that end we put together a few things that Bongani Mayosi was quoted as saying in the biography.

Lift as you rise
How can what I have learned help to solve my community's challenges?
How do you pursue success while maintaining personal well-being?
If you pour yourselves into the little things, your efforts will yield big results.

Engaging Students

Mayosi's advice emphasizes helping others, supporting your community, and appreciating the small things in life. We also asked students how they think they can balance pursuing their goals with maintaining their personal well-being.

Our goal was to involve everyone, even those unfamiliar with Mayosi or the book, in the discussion and raise awareness about the ongoing events. As you'll see in the galleries below, our students provided some very insightful responses!

Lessons Learned

Our whiteboard campaign successfully promoted the book, its themes, and the events during the launch week. However, we identified several areas for improvement:

Event Duration: We observed that displaying the whiteboard every day resulted in a loss of interest among students. In future week-long events, we plan to display the whiteboard for only three days to maintain curiosity.
Board Placement: Placing the boards near the entrance caused congestion. Moving forward, we'll position the boards centrally to avoid this issue.
Student Engagement: It was challenging for librarians to capture students' attention and explain the book, the launch, Mayosi, and the quotes. Despite these challenges, we gathered many insightful thoughts from students, which we've digitized and shared here.
Marker Visibility: The green marker was particularly hard to read in future campaigns, we'll use striking, visible colors and keep markers fully functional.

Notes on the Galleries

We've adjusted contrast, saturation, and shadows in the images to enhance the visibility of the writing. Despite our best efforts, some comments written in green marker might be illegible due to the marker's light color and its eventual depletion.