How the Intensive Course Advanced Project Work
All four BUSCO project partner universities met for an intensive course with a team of multisectoral stakeholders from the community with the aim of building resilient and sustainable communities in October 2017. The intensive course had a notable effect on Busco’s project work.
The intensive course was carried out during the 17th – 26th October 2017. More than 60 participants including students and community stakeholders from the government and non-government organizations brought new innovations in co-creation of sustainable and resilient communities.
Five living labs for sustainable community development were created during the intensive course, including Environment/ecotourism, Economic/entrepreneurship, Social/legal advice and Conflict resolution/Counselling. Field visits for both students, lecturers and community stakeholders were carried out to uncover issues and to promote discussions.
Key experts from both Universities and community stakeholders had a discussion on community issues preventing sustainable development related to living labs and in order to come up with the action plan for co-creating sustainable and resilient community.
On top of this, the capacity of the Universities in increasing access to the higher education was discussed, and the new Joint Online Master programme in Community Development and Conflict Resolution was launched. In order to facilitate lecturers and students on this Master programme, special training for students and lecturers was done on areas of e-learning and Moodle platform training to equip them with the necessary tools when teaching and learning online.
Text by: Heriel H. Mfangavo
Clinical Psychology and Mental Health Specialist