Successful community engagement

First-year students master the skills of project activity, the psychological foundations of effective communication, develop critical thinking through inclusion in solving society's specific problems, within the framework of the community engagement discipline, which is conducted for the second year in Kozybayev University.

For example, each group of students implements its own social project. It can be directed to help the older generation, orphanages, animal shelters. Or to popularize the history of Kazakhstan, the state language study, respect for the environment. Other cases relate to socio-political, sports, cultural and educational, media, medical, ethno-cultural fields and much more. The main goal is that this activity should benefit society.

Only in the current semester about 500 children are involved in such work. They are implementing more than 40 projects. Their interim results were presented to the public at the open event "Implementation of the University's third mission through the discipline "Community engagement".

"For the first time this discipline was introduced in the USA. In Kazakhstan, it is taught in three universities. The main thing for which we introduced this discipline into the educational process is for students to learn how to help society, see ways to do it. Our educational institution, the city, the environment – all this is closely connected with society. Within the framework of this training course, students learn to serve society and apply their knowledge in practice," said Akmaral Turgaleeva, member of the Board for educational, social issues and interaction with employers.

The meeting was attended by partners with whom our students closely cooperate in implementing their projects. They noted that such volunteer activity is high demand jobs and is necessary for support people in need.