Page 7 - UNNAT BHARAT ABHIYAN

6 Fostering Social Responsibility & Community Engagement in Higher Education Institutions in India

After the first international conference on higher education, UNESCO supported a new
global network in 1999—Global University Network for Innovations – GUNI (www.
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guninetwork.org). GUNI’s 5 World Report on Higher Education brings together global
experiences on the theme “Knowledge, Engagement & Higher Education: Contributing
to Social Change” (2014).”Community University Engagement (CUE) is central to the
creation of a new citizenship…This Report proposes integrating CUE into all institutional,
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teaching and research activities, as a way of thinking and acting.” (GUNI, 2012).
There have been several other initiatives around the world that demonstrate the growing
practice of community engagement and social responsibility in higher education.

Living Knowledge Network in Europe (www.scienceshops.org) has emerged from the
movement of Science Shops which began in the Netherlands in 1970s. Science Shops
have been supported through many European governments and the EU over the past
decade. These ‘science shops’ are intermediary structures between universities and local
communities to mediate research on community identified problems jointly. Science
Shops have primarily comprised of engineering and natural science disciplines. PASCAL
International Observatory (www.pascalobservatory.org) has focused its attention on
promoting university partnerships with regional and local governments over the past
decade. The Talloires Network on Civic Roles and Social Responsibilities of Higher
Education (www.tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork) began in 2005 and now has more than 400
universities as its members worldwide; its focus has been on the promotion of university
engagement in communities to strengthen democratic citizenship amongst youth.

The Government of UK has supported over the past decade a National Centre for
Coordinating Public Engagement (www.nccpe.org) by HEIs where universities are
supported to foster social responsibility and community engagement. Over the past two
decades, European Union’s Horizon 2020 research programme has been explicitly focusing
on ‘Responsible Research & Innovation’ (www.rritools.org) which mainstreams public
engagement in all research projects of universities.

In its 6th World Report on Higher Education (2017), GUNi has focused on this very
theme —“Towards A Socially Responsible University: Balancing the Global & the
Local”--- and it calls upon HEIs…” as centres of training and the production as well as
transmission of knowledge, HEIs are well positioned to link the local and the global..”. 3

India is a signatory to global commitment to achieving Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) by 2030. Achieving these 17 SDG goals requires generating locally appropriate
solutions. HEIs can play significant roles by teaching about SDGs and undertaking
locally prioritised research for communities around them. Research and teaching of each
SDG will enable multi-disciplinarily in HEIs, as each SDG cuts across several academic
disciplines. Global University Network for Innovations (GUNI) in its 6 World Report
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beacons HEIs to engage with SDGs: 4

2 http://www.guninetwork.org/report/higher-education-world-4
3 http://www.guninetwork.org/report/higher-education-world-6
4 http://www.guninetwork.org/report/higher-education-world-6