VC’s Open Lecture: Vikas Pota

13 July 2022 | VC Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng

Dear colleagues and students

I am thrilled to invite you to join me in the next Vice-Chancellor’s Open Lecture as we learn more about how we can be changemakers from our speaker, Mr Vikas Pota.

Pota is the founder and CEO of T4 Education, a digital media platform providing opportunities for educators to network, collaborate, share best practices and support each other’s efforts to improve learning. It was established as a response to the challenges posed by the pandemic to education globally.

His lecture is titled “Great change needs great changemakers”. It will show that today’s students can lead the change they want to see in the world if they have a vision and know how to communicate it.

The world faces colossal challenges – from climate change and poverty to disease – in a time of rapid pace of technological advancements. For Pota, it is amid these great changes that the world’s changemakers need to step forward and find their voice. He believes that whatever the question, education is the answer.

Even before the pandemic, the United Nations warned that the world was headed towards missing the Sustainable Development Goal of universal education by 2030. Pota will look at what the world’s major organisations and institutions are doing to address the challenges we face and how it will take everyone working together to bring about the change we need to see.

He will argue that individuals can have a significant impact if they are armed with the right tools, including at the very least a commitment to change. He will share examples from his own experience of building a movement to improve global education and stories that have inspired him along the way.

Pota serves on several non-profit boards, including the Education Outcomes Fund, Queen Rania Teacher Academy, Educate Girls, and Teach for All. He is an honorary lecturer at the University College London Institute of Education, was a visiting practitioner at Harvard Graduate School of Education and served as a senior policy fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Science & Policy.

He has been recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and accorded the status as one of London’s 1 000 most influential persons. He was recently named European regional honouree for the 2022 Young Presidents’ Organisation Global Impact Award.

Please join me for what will be an informative discussion from someone who believes that a world in which every child receives good education will only be built by listening to those at the heart of education.

When: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Time: 18:00 SAST
Platform: Microsoft Teams