Civic Leadership to Improve Social Well-Being – Let’s collaborate!

Civic Leadership means “working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community”. (Thomas Ehrlich (ed.) (2000): Civic Responsibility and Higher Education, Oryx Press: xxvi.)

To strengthen Civic Leadership by enabling collaboration and exchange opportunities, the platform “Civic Leadership to Improve Social Well-Being” was created to bring together partners from university and society:

Today’s social, political and ecological challenges and the simultaneous thrive for Europeans’ citizens well-being and quality of life leads to two inevitable realisations: 

• The need for cross-sectoral collaborations between students, universities and external stakeholders to face as well as find solutions to our century’s challenges – in order to strengthen the common feeling of well-being.
• The need of universities to align research and education with real social needs and issues – to reinforce a university’s role in and responsibility for society as well as to provide a learning environment in which students are enabled to become responsible citizens.

To follow this guidance, a project team from Birmingham, Cologne and Linnaeus developed the digital platform increasing collaboration between universities, students and external stakeholders by:

• Providing opportunities for external engagement (physical and virtual)
• Providing a collaboration space accessible to all three stakeholders 
• Providing resources to support civic engagement and enterprise education

What’s in it for you?

As a student …
… you can find mobility as well as engagement opportunities, both virtual and physical. Explore internships, job opportunities and project-based classrooms that follow the UN SDGs. 

As an educator …
… you can find a network and guidelines to support embedding the UN SDGs in your classroom and institution. Engage with external stakeholders to build curricula around real social needs.

As an external partner …
… you can find collaborative opportunities, as well as contacts to address a (social) need to be addressed in an academic environment.