Providence College of Engineering is proud to announce that it has been granted membership to the United Nations Academic Impact initiative.

The college joins over 1000 colleges and universities in 120 countries worldwide to work with the United Nations to promote global priorities including peace, human rights and sustainable development.

The United Nations Academic Impact, also known by its acronym UNAI, is a UN initiative to align institutions of higher education, scholarship and research with the United Nations and with each other.

Remarking at the launch in November 2010, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: “The Academic Impact aims to generate a global movement of minds to promote a new culture of intellectual social responsibility. It is animated by a commitment to certain bedrock principles. Among them: freedom of inquiry, opinion and speech; educational opportunity for all; global citizenship; sustainability; and dialogue.”

Through local activities, members of UNAI are committed to supporting the UNAI’s ten grounding principles:

1. A commitment to the principles inherent in the United Nations Charter as values that education seeks to promote and help fulfil;
2. A commitment to human rights, among them freedom of inquiry, opinion, and speech;
3. A commitment to educational opportunity for all people regardless of gender, race, religion or ethnicity;
4. A commitment to the opportunity for every interested individual to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary for the pursuit of higher education;
5. A commitment to building capacity in higher education systems across the world;
6. A commitment to encouraging global citizenship through education;
7. A commitment to advancing peace and conflict resolution through education;
8. A commitment to addressing issues of poverty through education;
9. A commitment to promoting sustainability through education;
10. A commitment to promoting inter-cultural dialogue and understanding, and the “unlearning” of intolerance, through education.

Providence College is only the 8th institution in Kerala to have been granted membership.

Commenting on the membership, chairperson Smt Mariamma George said “Providence College is honoured to be part of this global movement and such initiatives form part of our founding vision to prepare global citizens who will use their engineering knowledge and expertise to make the world around them better for themselves and their fellow citizens.“