Office of the Vice-Chancellor
Community engagement is the process of working collaboratively and interactively with and through various groups of people affiliated by geographic proximity, special interest, or similar situations to address these issues affecting the wellbeing of those people.
Community Engagement Division of Kathmandu University acts as a facilitator for different parties such as the local people, community representatives, agencies, students, faculties with the university to collaborate in a fully efficient way for maximum engagement of people for community development. KUCED aims to be responsive to the communities all over Nepal and reciprocate with the local community’s efforts to create an education-friendly, healthy atmosphere in the vicinity.
Community Engagement Division functions under the Office of the Vice-Chancellor. Along with it, Mr. Kishor Khanal, who leads the division, is the main contact person at the office.
Community has experiences that holds great value which is crucial for co-creation, partnership, and sustainable development.
Communities will assist and offer in-depth understanding of context- specific
informal knowledge, technologies and skills.
It will also offer leadership, resources and issues for management through professional and intellectual resources.
Community based problems are learning opportunities and communities is a testing ground for the university. In exchange it will offer sustainability, development, growth and professional assistance to name a few.
Schools can create an environment to provide skills to member which can be facilitated through its research
and teaching activities.
The main objective of the division is to manage the university’s relationship with the local communities towards building an education-friendly and healthy atmosphere. The division functions under the office of the vice chancellor as a part of the central secretariat.
Kathmandu University to this date from its establishment has worked on hundreds of projects, interventions and lead many activities for maximum growth of the communities, their development and overall well-being through its schools. You can find the list and details of all the projects that the schools have done.
Community Engagement Division generally follows three modalities:
KU identifies the problems in the society
The university is constantly disseminating updated knowledge by integrating it in its courses to the students which makes the whole process of identifying issues straightforward that exists in the Nepalese communities. The diversity in its enrolled students coming from various places of Nepal is also a direct source to find issues, and it certainly assists to sense underlying problems as well.
Community approaches the university
Nepalese community have already developed a sense of trustworthiness and faith in Kathmandu university as it routinely sends its student and faculties with high level of experience for extensive research, volunteering, helping for community development. Communities respects the efforts by the university to eradicate social problems and other issues. Hence, a lot of communities have already approached KU in the past and still do but now they go through the CED for even more efficient handling.
Third-party involvement
The university also has a good relationship with various national and international agencies including NGOs and INGOs. They could be funding agencies for instance who have a project and they require the university’s expertise; KU has also collaborated with similar international institutes from different countries of the world.
