About

Vice President for Community Engagement and Enterprise Development (VPCEED) is one of the four vice presidents under the presidents of Haramaya University. The vice president office strives to achieve the vision, goal and objectives of the university, particularly paid more attention toward the mission of contributing toward the delivery of demand-driven and transformative community service; and disseminating generated and adapted knowledge and technologies. This is by being strictly adhering to the mandate given to universities stipulated in Higher Education Proclamation No 650/2009 and Council of Ministers Charter Regulation No 232/2011 to provide service to communities in mandate region through professional and consultancy work.

The office has been gearing toward attainment of excellence in strategic partnership and transformative community engagement. Its linkage and partnership extended from local and regional to international level. The term engagement describes the ways in which members of Haramaya University community use their skills, talent, and energy to benefit a wide array of communities within and beyond the University, while at the same time exposing Haramaya students to rich and real-world learning experiences. The engagement helps students to perceive and understand more about complex nature of community problems and needs, as well as take measures at individual and institution level to address them. The engagement expose students and the faculty to a variety of stakeholders to collaborate in understanding problems and use collective potential to make a difference. The office has identified its thematic areas of intervention mainly focusing on improving productivity of agriculture and nutrition, health of community, qualities of education, legal service, natural resource management and better infrastructure to communities in the mandate region, the country and the world at large. One of the strategic objectives to reach its goal is creating and sustaining strong partnership with industry and community at mandate area, national and international level. To improve employability of the youth, the office through the directorate for University Industry Linkage and Business entrepreneurship, incite mind of graduates and youth in the region through incubation programs and training on business entrepreneurship.

The office of VPCEED believed that increasing revenue and diversity fund sources will be one of the means to reach to its goal. For the purpose, directorate for Enterprise Development has been working to generate income from different type of enterprise using facilities and soft skills largely owned by the university. Different projects that serve to solve the problem of the community and meet the need are developed and funds are solicited from national and international organizations. VPCEED office believed that cooperation between partners need to be centered toward mutual benefit for sustainable partnership.