What if we measured work not by what it pays, but by what it lets you become? Capabilities at Work (Cambridge University Press, 2026, open access) brings voices to one bold idea — that work should let everyone be and do what they truly value.

An international conversation on work, well-being, and what people have reason to value. Join us on 23 September 2026 — in Centurion or online — for the launch of Capabilities at Work.

Today you receive; tomorrow you give. At today's certificate ceremony, Optentia and the NWU marked the completion of four mentorship courses — and set dozens of new mentors and mentees on their way.

Scholarship meets frontline practice. Meet Dr Vedhna Dayanand-Lalla, whose work bridges gender, empowerment and the capability approach.

Capability Month begins on the first day of Spring — a season of new growth, and the right moment to ask what allows people to flourish.

Some jokes take twenty years to become tender. In 2002, a room in Potchefstroom held South Africa's first conversation on burnout — five speakers, one psychiatrist with a wicked pen, and a set of cartoons that has since become a way of keeping company with friends now gone.

Heritage Day asks where we come from. This September, Optentia's Capability Month asks where we can go.

Planning is well underway for the launch of Capabilities at Work — a new, interdisciplinary perspective on work and well-being built on the Capability Approach. On 23 September 2026, at Momentum in Centurion, we bring this research within reach of the universities, industry and policy voices who can turn a new paradigm into practice.

We helped unemployed people prepare for the labour market — until one of them gently asked, "but what now, there is still no work?" This is the story of how that question opened up another dimension of our work: not only preparing people for jobs, but also preparing the labour market for people.

Mentorship isn’t weak — it’s judged by its worst versions. Done deliberately, it targets the exact gap our graduates fall into: the broken bridge between a degree and a job.

There is a familiar pessimism about the research pipeline in South Africa. This is a story about why I am more optimistic than I was a year ago — and about two young scientists who made me one.

Reflections from an afternoon with KwaZulu-Natal's Life Orientation teachers, and a case for removing the barriers that hold both teachers and learners back.

Some paths part ways only to curve back toward each other. Here's what happened when research and administration reunited over one student's PhD journey.

Every learner has potential; this post asks whether the opportunity in front of them is real — and what teachers can do to open it.

South Africa's mental health picture refuses to sit still inside a single figure. This post looks at three things at once — what the data actually says, where the workplace risk comes from, and why offering support is not the same as making it reachable.

Two of the world's leading burnout scholars — Prof. Wilmar Schaufeli and Prof. Leon de Beer — visit Optentia this September.

Our new book Capabilities at Work asks not what predicts performance, but what people are truly free to be, do, and become. Join us on 23 September to celebrate a research journey that crosses disciplines and centres social justice.

Join leading scholars and practitioners on 23 September 2026 for a hybrid event exploring how the capability approach can advance well-being, decent work and social justice.

Dr Lance Bunt is building the technical infrastructure and visual identity for Optentia's new Qhubekela Phambili Trainer Development course, based on Dr Rachele Paver's methodology. It equips counsellors and teachers to tackle youth unemployment in South Africa.

What began as a search for the world's best cross-cultural psychologist became one of the most meaningful chapters of my academic life — a twenty-five-year story of scholarship, friendship, and the partnerships that make science matter.