Community Service Directorate in its history for the first time got its act together and issued a call for Community Project proposals to redress social issues; 14 of them from different disciplines came for defense on 14th October, 2017, at Senate Hall. The evaluation and selection process for the same will be carried out later.. Click here to see the pictures.

Of 14 proposals, two belonged to research out-puts, two with pure research components, some based on observations and few training-centric are i.e. ‘Statistical concept for high school math teachers,’ ‘Community-based data handling and processing mechanism,’ ‘Tutoring math to Grade 10th & 12th students,’ and ‘Optimization technique to select design parameters using analysis of Anova’; remaining were from allied arenas, Community Service Directorate Director, Dr Teklu Wegayehu, informed.

On annual project quantum, he said, Community Service Directorate’s strategic plan we can have four projects from research outputs and six from existing problems making it 10 for this year. As of now, two are research outputs and two more are expected. This first tranche of 14 proposals forms the part of first quarter call while more will be invited in the third quarter.

Of two research out-puts, first focuses on ‘Intervention of Cysticercosis Echinococcus’ known as hydatid, hyper or dog tapeworm that parasitizes small intestine of canines as an adult, which has intermediate hosts as livestock and humans, causes cystic echinococcosis.

It aims to treat those affected areas in South Omo woderas i.e. Yangatom, Hamar and Turmi that will incur ETB 250000, of which ETB 100000 has been procured from South Omo Zone Administration and rest will be funded by Community Service Directorate, Dr Teklu added.

The second research out-put, ‘Small-scale farming and threatened landscape in wetland of Abaya-Chamo basin’ suggests hotspots to be addressed to arrest land degradation so that pure water gets percolated down into the lake.

While, other projects revolve around observations like one by Dr Joshua, ‘Recycling of used vegetable oil from cafeteria of Arba Minch city for biofuel production,’ and another by Mr Defaru Debebe that advocates harnessing Enset crop, ‘Climate resisting crop propagation.’

Especially, two proposals, ‘Identification of spatial distribution of sediment yield and effective baseline scenario on Kulfo watershed,’ and ‘Flood mapping and risk analysis under climate change using Baso watershed’ are purely research in nature, hence may be rejected.

The selection process is yet to begin, however, committee is working on them and primarily proposals emanating from research out-puts and existing problems will be selected, he quipped.

 

(Corporate Communication Directorate)