Community to benefit from social pledge
The University has formally committed to increase its positive impact on the local community.
The Principal, Professor Sir Timothy O’Shea, has signed the Social Impact Pledge, a nationwide initiative that encourages public bodies to deliver projects that benefit the public.
Edinburgh is one of the first higher education institutions in Scotland to commit to the nationwide scheme.
The staff and students of the University of Edinburgh pledge to challenge ourselves to increase the positive impact we make on our local community and make better use of our assets – our buildings, grounds and our people. In the next six months we will do at least three things that we don’t do at the moment to improve our social impact.
Boosting skills
The University will deliver three specific projects as part of the Pledge, all of which will enable more students and academics to engage with the community.
Students will work with families of primary school children across Edinburgh to encourage them to include reading, writing and counting in their everyday lives.
This initiative to boost literacy and numeracy has been developed by the University’s Moray House School of Education in partnership with the Scottish Book Trust.
Social enterprise
The University has also committed to increasing the number of student start-ups that offer goods and services for local community benefit and to ensuring their long term sustainability.
This boost in not-for-profit social enterprises is being developed by the Assistant Principal Community Relations and the Director of Finance, in consultation with student leaders, commercialisation programme Launch.ed and the Business School.
Digital literacy
More student digital ambassadors will support digital literacy and participation amongst older people in the community.
The scheme will run in collaboration with the University’s WEEE Recycling programme.
The University is strongly committed to working for the benefit of the local community, placing our research and teaching in the service of Edinburgh. We are delighted to be signing up to the Social Impact Pledge and hope that our new projects will contribute to the promotion of educational inclusion and social well-being.
Related links