Committee on Community Activities: mission statement

The Committee on Community Activities initiates, supports and fosters mutually beneficial voluntary partnerships between the University and the community. Such partnerships are charitable, educational and voluntary activities, which use the University's resources (intellectual and other) to benefit a local, national or international community of interest.

Illustrative examples of community engagement by the University, Colleges and our staff and students include: a College lending its sports pitch to a community sports club; a group of students providing a befriending service for older people; a member of staff sitting on a national flood defence committee; a group of management students writing a business plan for a community organisation; an academic giving a lecture to a school class as part of the Cambridge Science Festival; students fundraising for schools in Kenya; or school pupils coming into the Engineering Department to build a model rocket launch pad.

The Committee on Community Activities focuses its support in particular on educational activities which harness the University's unique intellectual resources and which are therefore of the most benefit to the community and to the University itself, with particular regard to communities which might not otherwise have access to such resources.

The University's Committee on Community Activities co-ordinates this area of work, with the support of the Office of Community Affairs, and aims to:

  1. Support departments, colleges, museums, and student societies to run their community and outreach activities effectively, e.g. through the allocation of grants from the Active Community Fund, through training and capacity building;
  2. Promote, monitor and report on University community activity, and work with other universities to evaluate community activity;
  3. Work with external community partners to initiate and support mutually beneficial University-community initiatives;
  4. Raise the profile of community engagement across the University and secure for it the most favourable environment possible.