Universitas Gadjah Mada and the local government of South Konawe regency in Southeast Sulawesi province have signed an agreement or Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on education, research and community service as well as regional development plans on Wednesday (28/12) at the UGM Main Office. It aims at improving resources potential to support developments or the implementation of higher learning mission.
The Regent of South Konawe, H. Surunuddin Dangga, said the cooperation was to support the development master plan of the regency in terms of physical development and human resources.
“One of the goals we want to achieve is human resource capacity building, and this corresponds to the cooperation we are about to take with UGM,” he said after the MoU signing.
Rector of UGM, Prof. Ir. Dwikorita Karnawati, M.Sc., Ph.D., welcomed this. The development target of the regency is along with the direction of the national development policy which becomes the attention of UGM. As a national university, regional development across Indonesia continues to be the one to work on by UGM.
“During the recent anniversary of UGM, we reinstated the commitment to be the university of the people. UGM also initiated the concept and practices of smart village development,” she said.
The national development ought to start from the rural areas, according to Dwikorita, this becomes the solution to the gap problems between the rural and urban people. She added, despite the decreasing rate of poverty, but the gap between the two sides is increasing instead. So, application of modern technology for smart village is expected to boost the rural development.
On the support to South Konawe, she added that UGM would be ready to go with the regional governments to realise development goals, either through technology applications, regulation disemination, evaluation or training on strategic areas.
Furthermore, the South Konawe local government stated their readiness to support the UGM Student Community Service programme.
“Up to this day, there had already been four batches of student community service in our regency and we always supported them. This agreement will allow us to give more support in the future,” he said.