University of Balamand | Community Engagement

About Community Engagement

The Department of Community Engagement (DoCE) has been responsive to health, economic, and social pressures arising from different humanitarian crises in Lebanon and neighboring countries. The aim is to address community concerns and help populations enhance their physical, mental, social, environmental, developmental, and rightful health literacy so that they can achieve social and economic development, community prosperity, health, and well-being along three major axes: Healthier Society, Healthier School, and Safety and Protection (e.g. through our Landmines Resource Center). The challenge is to get community members to listen to themselves, to be informed, network, and be satisfied. This is through evidence-based management, monitoring and evaluation, communication for development, training of trainers, and capacity building. The DoCE executes holistic developmental interventions, merging the academic concepts of the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) curricula that ensure quality deliverables to target populations.

Why Community Engagement and why at UOB?
UOB is increasingly aware of the critical interconnection between community development, field work, and academia. As such, it calls for the advancement of community involvement and citizenship, and for understanding the surrounding crises.

Instead of using the top-down approach, UOB has planned and executed programs and projects that explicitly include members of the society, to facilitate community reform. This approach maximizes the involvement of citizens and draws on local expertise from a variety of groups to provide realistic and meaningful options. This also enhances the human potential and develops the ability of communities to solve their own problems, while augmenting the visibility of the University and adopting an evidence-based approach to interventions.

What would students actually do?
The Department of Community Engagement hosts internship students and other interested volunteers. It aims at facilitating service-learning and provides FHS students with opportunities to practice the knowledge learned in the classroom to gain professional, practical experience, while serving the community. At the end of the internship period, the outputs and outcomes of the research/tasks are disseminated, and the findings are discussed during each student’s thesis defense or presentation session, in the presence of fellow students and faculty members. As such, through involvement in the projects and programs of the Department, students develop professional skills that enable them to interact effectively with communities and be exposed to real-life work situations in Lebanon and abroad. As such, through involvement in the projects and programs of the Deparment, students develop professional skills that enable them to interact effectively with communities, gaining real-life work experience, in Lebanon and abroad.

Message from the Director

Habbouba Aoun, Dr.PH
habbouba.aoun@balamand.edu.lb

Friends, colleagues and community members,

Thank you all for visiting this page. Our aim is to offer you all the means, regardless of who you are - a student, professor, staff, community member - to understand and participate effectively in our programs.

This platform is built to offer a window to the community's involvement here at the University of Balamand. Our work with the population is never complete but has a systemic goal to serve the community and to partner and collaborate with other organizations. We encourage students to excel academically and to be engaged in student life, the community, and the world.

You are most welcome to join us.

The DoCE hosts internship students and other interested volunteers and collaborates with partners at the national, regional, and international levels. The multidisciplinary and professional team combines expertise with knowledge and education. The practical and scientific results of community interventions are disseminated to researchers, policymakers, and the public. The Department has a wide variety of publications that are used for training services, knowledge sharing, and documentation purposes. It ensures the use of creative methodologies to disseminate health messages and perform interventions that can promote health, by maintaining excellence in public health practice.

Habbouba Aoun, Dr.PH
Director; Department of Community Engagement
Email: habbouba.aoun@balamand.edu.lb
Faculty-Email: fhs@balamand.edu.lb
Tel: + 961 1 495 833/933

Career prospects

Students doing their internship at DoCE will be exposed to a wide spectrum of actors in the public health and development sector. They will get to know different national and international organizations where they could find career opportunities.

Tracks

• Healthier Society Program: works to meet different needs of communities from the public health and development perspectives.
• Healthier School Program: collaborates with the national SCHOOL HEALTH PROGRAM of the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education, to meet school health needs of students of public schools and their teachers.
• The Land Mines Resource Center (LMRC) (1997-present): represents one of the earliest civilian responses to the landmine problem in the Middle East. LMRC works in the context of the Lebanese Mine Action Center of the Lebanese Army. It provides accurate scientific information concerning the landmine issue and the needs of people disabled by war-related injuries throughout Lebanon. LMRC provides coordination and liaison between all concerned stakeholders and partners, to promote mine risk awareness and victims’ assistance, as well as encourage appropriate national and global policy formation and decision-making.