Increased Presence for University Social Responsibility on the FUAB Website
The UAB Foundation launches a website aimed at giving visibility to the activities carried out by the Corporation and its organisations in the field of Social University Social Responsibility and Social Action.
02/09/2019
One of the UAB Foundation’s objectives is to facilitate its integration within its area of influence and within society in general, accepting the principles of the organisation’s social responsibility and, in particular, consolidating and increasing social commitment. The organisations pertaining to the Corporation, through activities and projects in the ambit of University Social Responsibility (USR), embedded in the respective strategic plans as reflected in this new portal, will carry out this commitment.
The new communication tool aims to facilitate more detailed information of all these initiatives, grouped into the following areas: the Environment, Social Action, Equality and Gender, Social and Cultural Transfer, and Responsible Research. In addition to its informative role, it also aims to encourage active community participation. Many of the distinct sections on the web have direct links through which users can register for activities or contribute to a range of causes.
The website hopes to become a showcase for all the activities and initiatives carried out within the Corporation that may wish to promote their services to society, to connect more closely with distinct participants, to promote a critical understanding of reality and to participate in social processes.
University Social Responsibility, a global objective with local application
University Social Responsibility or USR is the ability to apply a set of principles and values to carrying out basic university functions: training, research and knowledge transfer, management of organisations, and social participation through the creation of communication channels and participation so as to respond to the demands of their particular interest groups.
Although UNESCO began to raise the need for universities to assume their social responsibility within the emerging knowledge society back in 1998, the first joint university initiative at European level was launched only in 2015, resulting in the document titled University Social Responsibility: A Common European Reference Framework, with the aim of offering a common frame of reference within the European Higher Education Area that would serve as support for the process of implementing social responsibility in European universities. From this first initiative came the UNIBILITY project, University meets Social Responsibility (2017), which transferred the continuity of the task to communities. Without ignoring the challenges and opportunities that globalisation entails for universities as creators of social change, the objective was to strengthen university relations with local communities through USR action.
The UAB, One of the Pioneering Universities in Spain
In the UAB, after beginning the process of implementing the USR in the 2009-2010 academic year, the 2013-2015 Master Plan already included among its objectives the execution of joint USR measures and actions with other university institutions, such as the UAB Corporation, of which this new web space is tangible evidence.
As a non-profit university organisation at the service of the UAB, the UAB Foundation is active in a wide range of distinct fields such as teaching, research, social action, the provision of services and heritage management. Focusing on society in general, it has the specific duty to apply the principles and values of the USR. This is a philosophy that the Corporation has to make patently apparent in all its decisions and actions and which, in turn, helps to highlight its commitment to the local area, to its public and, more generally, to its broader environment.
