Webinar "Social Commitment and Community Engagement in Higher Education in Latin America and Europe: Sharing Experiences and Institutional Self-Reflection Frameworks"

The Covid-19 pandemic has been yet another proof of how important it is for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to cooperate with their broader communities in mutually beneficial ways (both locally and globally), and it has also made the value of such collaborations more evident than ever.

In recent years, the emphasis on community engagement in higher education in Europe and Latin America has been renewed, but in many cases higher education institutions still lack a common framework that can help them institutionalize their cooperation and inform policy makers about the value of their participation. Anyways, there are a significant number of good practices and experiences that are a reference to advance in new stages of consolidation and projection of social commitment and community engagement.

In this webinar we explored and shared some of those good practices and initiatives from Latin America and Europe to promote social commitment and community engagement in higher education. We also explored a Toolbox for institutional self-reflection developed by the TEFCE project, as well as a practical experience of applying and piloting the Toolbox at the University of Girona. During the webinar, we had the chance to delve into different initiatives and good practices from Europe and from Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as to reflect on the concepts of social responsibility and community engagement and their meaning in both regions. Organizers, speakers and participants agreed that there is a clear need to continue these conversations and to foster a more structured dialogue between the two regions. 

For those of you who wish to revisit the event or some parts of it, or who wish to share it with other interested colleagues, please find here the link to the video recording:

The presentations are also available (see below) on this website.