Helping the community
GUIDED by its vision to be a global university of educational excellence, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR)’s social responsibility projects and initiatives cover a diverse spectrum of activities, rooted in its core values and reflected in its voluntary services in support of the people and the community.
With a focus on helping different ethnic and age groups, UTAR has reached out to various communities in need via meaningful projects.
The UTAR New Village Community Project consists of several programmes. Besides encouraging entrepreneurship among villagers, these programmes aim to introduce new village communities to the public and increase students’ social awareness and responsibility.
Recently, UTAR gained recognition for promoting and establishing several new villages’ small and medium-sized enterprises: Kampung Baru Bukit Tinggi for its ginger, Sitiawan’s Kampung Cina for its mee sua noodle and others through the adoption of digital marketing and e-commerce.
UTAR’s Orang Asli Project, meanwhile, aims to instil empathy among the students and promote cultural exchange with the orang asli community. This annual project involves UTAR students who usually acts as facilitators. These activities provide a chance for students to share their knowledge with other communities in Malaysia.
The Langkawi Project is an educational awareness community outreach programme carried out by the Community Service Society of UTAR and external collaborators, which aims to develop awareness and ignite passion for reading among children. Every year, UTAR students organise mini-camps for schoolchildren. UTAR students have also helped many schools enhance their learning environment through mural paintings.
UTAR also offered free Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) consultations for schools and rural communities. The programme involved 12 staff and 31 TCM students. The students also offered free acupuncture treatment under lecturers’ supervision.
UTAR has also collaborated with other government foundations to reach out to more communities from other states and countries. For example, UTAR collaborated with Yayasan Sukarelawan Siswa, a volunteerism entity owned by the Ministry of Higher Education to encourage, educate and guide the students of higher learning institutions to promote world peace and inculcate the spirit of camaraderie through community engagement within and outside the country.
UTAR also partners with the government, schools and other service providers to improve educational outcomes for children and create and support long-term change in disadvantaged communities.
Such commitments were further recognised when UTAR was awarded the Sin Chew Business Excellence Award 2017 in the CSR Excellence Award category for its social responsibility projects and initiatives that covered a wide range of activities and projects.
UTAR is highly reputed as one of the fastest growing private higher education institutions in the country since its inception in 2002. From only 411 students, the university now has about 25,000 students with campuses in Kampar, Perak and Bandar Sungai Long, Selangor. UTAR has graduated over 56,000 students since its inaugural convocation in 2005. It currently offers over 110 programmes from foundation studies to bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees in various fields.
UTAR was awarded self-accreditation status by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency in 2017, ranked 501-600 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019 and ranked #99 in the 2018 Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings.