Higher learning institutions globally have, and justly so, a primary responsibility to their students. This focus is ingrained within their vision, and their success on the regional or global level is determined by an evolving student intake, above-average examination outcomes, and the achievements of alumni as proof of concept for their mission. 

But academic institutions should maintain a social responsibility to those in their surrounding communities, as a means of driving development and socio-economic impact, with a particular focus on the most vulnerable.  

Academic institutions - particularly higher-ed institutions - are in a strong position to drive this socio-economic impact. By positioning a campus in a specific place, universities gain a unique touchpoint with their surrounding communities, and their physical proximity facilitates a better understanding of the unique contextual and/or geographical challenges facing these groups.

The majority of these institutions also often have extensive networks - of partners, funders, and alumni - making them well placed to more broadly advocating and source funding for solutions to address these challenges on a global level.

Institutions with campuses positioned in rural areas have unlimited opportunities for community partnership. With campus, construction comes job opportunities for local contractors (addressing often high levels of unemployment in rural and remote regions), and after building, vacancies for more permanent campus staff.

The University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), a global health sciences university based in the rural Northern Province of Rwanda, has done just this. When its Butaro Campus was inaugurated in January 2019, more than 1000 contractors from Burera District had been involved in the construction, and now, 70% of its full time staff and contractors hail from the surrounding area.

The Butaro campus kitchen is run by local contractors who, in turn, provide culinary training for chef apprentices onsite, and it deliberately sources food provisions from the immediate area as a means of supporting the income of local smallholder farmers and supporting them to diversify their crops.

Critically, community partnership should actually be seen as a partnership - not as unidirectional support for vulnerable communities. Institutions that engage with the surrounding communities themselves benefit from increased economic and physical development opportunities.

Recruiting a local workforce provides security and easier procurement of services, sourcing food locally cuts costs on expensive import tax or transportation and supports better quality control of production, and consumers benefit from being able to trace exactly where their food comes from.

The benefits of community partnership are not only logistical and economical but also serve a valuable educational purpose. Proximity to communities both enhances and extends formal classroom teaching to real-life, practical experiences in the field and, in the case of UGHE, opens up significant opportunities for students to learn directly from those that they will go onto serve.

By speaking directly with community members, Community Health Workers (CHWs), and other community leaders such as faith-based leaders, and district authorities, students learn about their unique contextual needs - such as limited access to basic health care, contributing factors to disease, or restrictive social norms - that in turn nurture a holistic, biosocial approach to health care that looks at the root cause of why certain communities suffer more.

Community members should also benefit from educational opportunities. Science days, hosted by UGHE’s Masters students on campus, provide immersive opportunities to engage local secondary school children in science experiments, and help address engrained social and cultural norms that might discourage girls from pursuing science in further study.

Immersive teacher-training courses help Butaro secondary school teachers improve their pedagogical practices, and English language courses are taught by graduate students for local students and teachers.

Further capacity-building initiatives aimed at youth in the community are in development spanning training in agriculture, hospitality & tourism, carpentry, and entrepreneurship, with the aim of driving wider socio-economic impact and addressing national development priorities around homegrown solutions.

Institutions within urban areas may presume a less pressing need for community engagement; populations living in urban areas generally benefit from higher employment rates, greater per capita income, more substantial housing and health options, and a broader range of educational opportunities than their rural counterparts, making targeted support more difficult to implement.

Yet this should not be a deterrent. Large-scale organizations like Nike, though radically different from UGHE, have already done this to great effect, hiring 85% of their staff from within a 3 miles radius from their flagship city store, and creating volunteering paid programs.

By metaphorically extending the boundaries of their campuses, higher-ed institutions can forge meaningful partnerships with their community neighbors for the benefit of both parties. Financial barriers to community engagement activities should not be a barrier; the majority of initiatives can (as proven at UGHE), be effectively implemented with little to no funding by capitalizing on existing facilities and leveraging the strong advocacy base of students, staff, and faculty to champion new ideas and innovations, and lend voluntary support to community development projects.

For only until we start to prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable and share a collective social responsibility to communities, will we start to see wider global development for the benefit of all.

The writer is the Director of Campus Operations and Community Engagement University of Global Health Equity