Asia University President and Rector Forum on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and Regional Revitalization

14 May 2019, oleh: superadmin

Taichung, Taiwan (13/5/2019). Indonesia as one of the countries within the area of “ring of area,” must always be prepared for disaster, because every natural disaster always causes many victims and creates a social vulnerability that should be managed. However, this is not enough if the government only does it.“There must be participation from society in implementing disaster management consist of mitigation, emergency response, and recovery. The involvement of private institution and volunteer group must be improved through a program of Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction”, said by Dr. Gunawan Budiyanto, Rector of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) in Asia University President and Rector Forum on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and Regional Revitalization 2019.

Gunawan, in his presentation, entitled: Disaster Awareness as a Part of University Social Responsibility, as a part of the social responsibility of educational institutions, UMY held many programs for society to deal with the disaster.

Held on Mei 13th, 2019 at Ando Lecture Hall Museum of Modern Art, Asia University Taiwan, Gunawan explained that one of the missions of UMY is to increase the human dignity as part of advancing the human values and civilization. This mission assigns UMY to be aware of human welfare through social responsibility program. Disaster is always causing victims and social vulnerability; therefore UMY has been implementing social empowerment program through social service activities in rural and impacted areas. Gunawan also mentioned that in order to support this program, UMY takes action to introduce disaster management which consisting of disaster mitigation, emergency response management, and recovery process provided in a workshop and practice.

Meanwhile, the Director of International Relations Office UMY, Yordan Gunawan explained that this forum is designed to discuss the role of the university in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations’ agenda. President of Asia University, Professor Jeffery P. Tsai started the presentation by showing the university’s program which supporting the SDGs.

Beside Rector Gunawan, this event also participated by other speakers, such as: Peretz Lavie (President, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel), Katsutoshi Sakurai (President, National University Corporation Kochi University, Japan), Appa Rao Podile (Vice-Chancellor, University of Hyderabad, India), João Amaro de Matos (Matos Vice Rector, NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal), President, China Medical University, Taiwan Academician, Academia Sinica, Taiwan), and President, Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan), said Yordan. (fds, mmi, ydg)