Forum on partnership for indigenous community resilience
KUCHING: A forum on ‘ Un i v e r s i t y - C ommu n i t y Partnership for Indigenous Community Resilience’ was held in the Operation Room on the second floor of Wisma Bapa Malaysia recently.
It was the result of Sarawak Development Institute ( SDI)/ Angkatan Zaman Mansang (Azam) and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak ( Unimas) collaborating with Cornell University, USA.
Director of the Workforce Development Unit of the Chief Minister’s Department and SDI director Dr Abdul Rahman Deen said the forum aimed to bring together university professors, lecturers and students to interact with the community for the latter to learn self-reliance in charting their own progress.
“The forum will build upon university- community partnership between Long Lamai community members here in Sarawak, Unimas’ Institute of Social Informatics and Technological Innovation ( Isiti) and Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources and Public Service Centre. It will use ‘service learning’ to build community resilience and sustainability,” he said before the forum started.
Unimas Isiti director Dr Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer revealed that ‘service learning’ is a process in which students engage with communities in activities that benefit them both, with educational goals linked to community goals and outcomes.
He said service learning was being adopted by universities across the world to teach students life- skills through real-world experiences that complement class-room learning.
“We hope the forum can contribute to university and community partnership goals and government officials can learn about the grassroots demand for resilience- oriented development among under-served communities,” he said.
He hoped university representatives would gain insight on how to fulfil their obligations to community engagement, how to adopt service-learning to enhance knowledge, and how to stimulate research with real world impact beyond academia.
Apart from Narayanan, the five panelist speakers were associate professor of the Department of Natural Resources, Cornell University Dr Shorma Alfred; visiting professor of Isiti Unimas, Dr Roger Harris; associate director for Community ServicesLearning and Partnership, Public Service Center, Cornell University, Amy Kuo Somchanhmavong; research fellow from Isiti Unimas, Dr Tariq Zaman and Unimas Penan post graduate student Franklin George.
Present at the forum were Deputy State Secretary Dr Sabariah Putit and SDI acting CEO Rosalind Yang Misieng, Unimas Deputy Vice- Chancellor of Student Affairs and Alumni, Professor Dr Mohd Fadzil Abdul Rahman and officers from government agencies.