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Prompted by the enlarging skills gap between the university graduate and the desired employee in Mauritius, the Charles Telfair Institute embarked its students on the #NuKapav project for an authentic work integrated learning (WIL) experience which endeavours to fight for the societal inclusion of Persons with Disabilities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of this service-learning project on the students from professional, civic engagement and social justice perspectives.

This research used a focus group methodology, allowing the 23 students who participated on the #NuKapav project to share their experiences.

This paper recommends that universities in Mauritius and other regional countries consider incorporating service-learning into their WIL programmes to reinforce graduate employability skills and encourage good citizenship through lasting allegiance to community causes.

The higher education system in Mauritius operates within a broader context facing constant mutations influenced by socio-economic and political factors. As such, research on service-learning cannot be conducted in isolation but should instead include the perspective of various stakeholders on both the demand and supply side of community learning projects. The main limitation of this research relates to its focus on capturing student participants’ perspective alone. Further research is, therefore, recommended to examine how other stakeholders, including employees, employers and community service project supervisors, value service-learning for a more comprehensive view.

The main contribution of this paper is the examination of how service-learning can help equip graduates with crucial career skills, while bringing an enduring mind-set shift in the future workforce for sustained commitment to social change and inclusion.

This study aims to understand and analyse the financial independence of women in small island developing states, with a focus on Mauritius. Factors such as employer choice, domestic violence, sociological factors, lack of opportunities and empowerment and the legal framework have been identified as potential influencers of the financial independence of women.

A survey was conducted where residents of Mauritius were targeted to have a more generic overview of the subject matter. A response rate of 347 was received. The partial least square structural equation modeling was used to analyse the proposed framework.

A total of 12 hypotheses were proposed and only 2 hypotheses were confirmed. The sociological factors, lack of opportunities, domestic violence and employer choice appeared not to have a significant influence on the financial independence of women. The legal system had a significant influence on the financial independence of women.

It must be acknowledged that the literature is rich with studies on financial independence. Nevertheless, not much has been prescribed in the literature from the perspective of small developing economies and having women at the centre of the debate. The theory of gender and power and the social learning theory were used as the theoretical foundation.