13.3.5 : Environmental education collaborate with NGO
AIESEC Students and UTMCS Drive Climate Action in ECHO 5.0
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), through its student chapter of AIESEC and the UTM Climate Society (UTMCS), advanced its climate action agenda by organizing ECHO 5.0, a community-based environmental education programme emphasizing climate change adaptation and sustainability awareness. The event was conducted in collaboration with environmental NGOs and community partners, providing a platform for youth leadership, civic participation, and climate literacy development.
The programme identified key climate challenges affecting urban and coastal communities, including waste accumulation, flash floods, and increasing heat intensity. Participants, guided by experts and NGO mentors, engaged in workshops and simulations that modelled future climate scenarios with and without intervention, fostering critical understanding of mitigation and adaptation pathways. Educational modules addressed early-warning awareness, sustainable consumption, and policy-aligned local actions that support municipal and national environmental goals.
Monitoring and feedback mechanisms were embedded through post-programme surveys and reflective sessions, enabling adaptive improvement for subsequent ECHO editions. By linking student leadership with NGO experience and local government engagement, UTM translated its climate education strategy into community impact — cultivating informed citizens capable of supporting government-NGO partnerships for resilience building.
This initiative exemplifies UTM’s commitment to collaborative climate adaptation, aligning with SDG 13.3 and Malaysia’s National Policy on Climate Change through integrated educational, participatory, and data-driven approaches to environmental stewardship.
Source :
https://news.utm.my/2024/08/aiesec-utmcs-collaborated-to-organized-echo-5-0/
Pelancaran Resilience Living Lab Pasir Mas: Mengukuhkan pemulihan bencana di Kelantan
In July 2024, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), through the Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Center (DPPC), launched the Resilience Living Lab Pasir Mas 2030 as part of a strategic effort to strengthen disaster recovery capacity in the state of Kelantan. The launch coincided with the tenth-year reflection of the 2014 “ban kuning” flood disaster and was supported through a Disaster Recovery Assessment Workshop using the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) approach. The initiative was conducted collaboratively with governmental agencies, community representatives, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The presence of NGO partners highlighted the importance of cross-sectoral collaboration in developing community awareness and readiness for disasters exacerbated by climate variability, particularly frequent flooding in the Sungai Golok river basin.
The Resilience Living Lab functions as a platform to enhance local learning on disaster recovery and climate-adaptation principles. Through this initiative, UTM facilitated knowledge exchange on building-back-better approaches, infrastructural priorities, and community-level mitigation actions. Participants were exposed to on-site thematic visits, including cross-border disaster risk reduction strategies, resilient housing recovery concepts, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) considerations. These educational components were designed to strengthen community literacy regarding environmental risks linked to changing weather patterns and to encourage informed decision-making for future preparedness.
NGO involvement played a central role in transferring field-based experience and community-mobilisation practices. Through their engagement, local participants were guided to understand how social vulnerability, infrastructure fragility, and hydrological change can intersect during extreme flood events. This collaboration enabled participants to discuss adaptation strategies rooted in community behaviour, early hazard recognition, and recovery resource planning. The Living Lab’s format allowed NGOs to support UTM in embedding experiential education within disaster-prone districts, ensuring that learning was grounded in real community needs rather than theoretical instruction.
The initiative also emphasised local participation, encouraging community members to reflect on past events and strengthen their own resilience planning. By bringing NGOs into dialogue with residents, disaster-management officers, and university researchers, the programme enabled a multi-perspective interpretation of climate impacts. This aligns with the methodology’s focus on partnerships that enhance adaptation capacity through education, awareness and local empowerment.
Through collaborative workshops and site-based demonstrations, UTM helped disseminate technical understanding of PDNA, highlighting how data from damage and loss assessments can be used to prioritise urgent recovery and long-term adaptation measures. NGO facilitators contributed to contextualising these tools based on community realities, encouraging bottom-up feedback loops. This collaborative model helps build shared responsibility for preparedness within flood-affected populations.
The Resilience Living Lab Pasir Mas 2030 demonstrates UTM’s commitment to environmental education through NGO involvement, particularly in strengthening climate-adaptation awareness at community scale. By uniting academic expertise, field-based NGO experience and resident participation, the programme enhances collective resilience, encourages adaptive behaviour, and supports knowledge translation for communities regularly exposed to climate-driven flood impacts.
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