The Unisa  SBL Time banking volunteer programme for rural-urban global business skills transfer is integrated with teaching and learning as it seeks to develop cognitive and metacognitive capabilities of students in impactful and tangible ways that are linked to community development. It further seeks to cultivate graduate attributes that are linked to deeper consciousness and awareness of connectedness of all people with diverse attributes including race, class, gender, age and social standing. The project was developed by Prof Pumela Msweli, the acting Executive Dean and CEO of the Graduate School of Business Leadership (SBL)

The aim of the project is to cultivate social activism among the SBL’s global business staff and students by utilising a time-banking system for rural communities to develop self-help projects that would eventually be part of an urban-rural value chain. It also aims to construct a teaching and learning assessment tool that incorporates journal reflections and social activism through the time-banking volunteer system to assess the deep learning and critical reflexivity of global business students.