AMU’s Community Service Directorate has kicked off ‘Community Week’ in an open air program at Main Campus in the presence of university fraternity. The exhibition featuring yearlong achievements on key areas was opened by President, Dr Damtew Darza and other top officials. Click here to see the pictures.

University President, Dr Damtew Darza, opening ‘Community Week,’ said a decade back, AMU was just an institute with overall 13,000 students; now with six colleges, two institutes, four schools and many research centres and over 35,000 enrolments, we have come of age.

Presently, AMU being the first generation university is standardizing teaching-learning and research initiatives on global level and simultaneously striving to address community issues and strengthening livelihood as well. And this program is an opportunity to discuss people’s issues and to inform to the cross section of society what university is doing to change social landscape.

Community Service Directorate, Dr Teklu Wegayehu, welcoming gathering has highlighted the general concepts of community service and major interventions made so far. He lauded Institute of Technology students for slew of exhibits and hailed contribution of coordination offices for collating and displaying research outputs i.e. Sahay Solar projects, legal services, trainings, etc.

Mentioning clutch of achievements, he informed that through legal service over 1,200 individuals including 55% females were aided to pursue litigations. On adult education front, 130 having completed Level-II will be graduating by the end of this program and 66 in Grade 4, who wrote their exams are waiting for the result.

Citing major initiatives, Dr Teklu said Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics, STEAM Project meant to impart practical skills to outstanding students from Gamo Gofa, Segen People’s and South Omo zones till date has trained 700 students and 400 are expected to get oriented this year.

Under Sahay Solar Project 22 health centres and 9 schools have been electrified and 28 more health centres are likely to be installed with solar units, which are off the national grid.

On technology transfer, he said, in last two years we have done reasonably well but in 2019, we plan to transfer few selected technologies that include butter agitator, Enset processing unit and few more that are yet to be selected can be of immediate help to the community.

Expressing contentment, he said, 10 individuals infected with Echinococcosis were operated by Norway physician, Dr Bjarte Tidemann Andersen. Furthermore, Mr Daniel Woldeyes, a biologist intervening in this regard informed that around 2838 were screened for suspected infection from Yangatom, Hamar and Dassanech of South Omo; 10 operated and 20 will soon be going under the knife.

To strengthen technology transfer, it’s important to interlink research, community service and technology transfer together and for the same in the next year plan at least 25 researches are prioritized to be made into projects and outputs will be transferred to the community.

He said adding that during valedictory program in the presence of different stakeholders, we will make a sort of scientific discourse wherein we will identify gaps and modify future direction.

It’s learnt in health sector, Zonal Health, Culture & Tourism and Justice Bureaus are financially supporting AMU. Mission for Community Development Program, an NGO will collaborate with AMU on the issue of children’s migration. In this regard, AMU has completed survey and share findings as with latter will form intervention strategy, Coordinator, Mr Mohammad Sure, said.

Chamo Campus-based Coordinator, Tigist Haile, informed that so far eight trainings on issues such as tourism, hospitality & leadership have been imparted and more are on cards this year.

Exhibition has multiple exhibits that include replicas of hydro-power projects like GERD, Gibe-III and Tendaho Sugar Technology and Irrigation Project; prototypes of a mini car, robotic wheel chair, pollution, synchronization failure detector, wireless energy transmission & charger, wildfire detecting UAV, soap mixing, scroll machine, etc. Corporate Communication Directorate Director, Mr Fissiha Bekele, anchored the program.

(Corporate Communication Directorate)