Community knowledge– Essential for university students

PENANG, 3 October: The campus community, particularly the students should get up close and personal with the local community to enable them to acquire ‘community knowledge’ in order to complete the formal education received in the lecture halls.

USM Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli Abdul Razak said that ‘community knowledge’ is important to enable students to understand the needs of the people and this can only be acquired through interaction with the community.

“This is why it is necessary for the university and the students to reach down to the grassroots and meet the people. The knowledge acquired in the university is, in itself, insufficient if we truly want to understand the problems faced by the community. It is the duty of the university to ensure that the community is not marginalized and to do so, we have to first understand their needs and their wants,” he said while launching the ’Program Bersama Masyarakat: Inisiatif Universiti Memperkasakan Kesihatan Komuniti di Kampung Jalan Tengku, Jelutong’ (‘A Community Programme: The Initiative of the University to Enhance the Health of the Community at Kampung Jalan Tengku, Jelutong’) today.

The one-day programme was jointly organised by the USM Pharmaceutical Sciences Society and the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (PPSF) USM with the aim of enabling the students in this School to reach out to the local community and at the same time carry out various health-related activities such as health screening, counselling and health exhibitions.

Apart from USM, Yayasan Bina Ilmu Berhad, a volunteer organization that has been actively providing social services to the community at Kampung Jalan Tengku also contributed towards this community programme.

According to Prof. Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli, PPSFUSM will ‘adopt’ Kampung Jalan Tengku to ensure the continuity and sustainability of the programme.

In conjunction with the programme, Prof. Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli, officially launched the new building for Yayasan Bina Ilmu Berhad and also presented drugs contributed by five pharmacies in Penang for the use of the community clinic run by Yayasan Bina Ilmu Berhad.

Also present at the pogramme were the Chairman of Yayasan Bina Ilmu, Dato’ Abdul Rashid Ismail; the Dean of the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Assoc. Prof. Syed Azhar Syed Sulaiman; and Dr. T. Jayabalan, Chairman of the Panel of Doctors at Yayasan Bina Ilmu.

Published: 11 Oct 2010

Contact details:

Universiti Sains Malaysia 11800 Minden Penang

++604-6533888 (Main Campus), ++609-7651704/00/11(Health Campus), ++604-5937788 (Engineering Campus)
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