Community engagement is enriching and empowering for the recipient or host community. There is transfer of knowledge and sometimes economic or social benefits. While a lot of research has been conducted to assess the benefits of community engagement to the host community, little progress has covered the implications for the students participating in university community engagement. This paper discusses the findings of community engagement programme in Orang Asli Settlement in Kuala Gandah, Pahang. The objective of the research is to investigate the impact of community engagement programme to the student participants who were enrolled in Economics of Social Policy course at the postgraduate masters’ level. Students’ response to their level of academic performance, life skills, civic and social responsibility and personal development was assessed with a pre and post test questionnaire. Their response was based on the Likert scale of 1-10. Results were tabled and calculated for percent increase in knowledge based on the gap analysis method

The purpose of this study is to look at India’s experience in using the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage Programme as a core development strategy aimed to empower women. Self-help groups are seen as socially active groups that can facilitate a government’s plans towards achieving the sustainable development goals. Today, the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage Programme is the largest microfinance programme globally, covering more than 10 million self-help groups. This article uses descriptive analysis to provide an overview of India’s experience. It focuses on how the program contributes to sustainable development by asking how the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage Programme leads to the empowerment of rural women, the challenges faced in its implementation, and the initiatives implemented in India to sustain the programme. This is followed by a quantitative analysis of the economic sustainability and the equality status by measuring the programme’s progress and the disparity between regions in the last decade. India’s experience shows that the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage Programme can empower women, facilitate entrepreneurial activities, enhance confidence and trust, provide technical skills and market access. Those are part of sustainable development goals and increase sustainable livelihood.

Malaysia is steadily progressing toward an aging population demographic pattern. While aging is a natural process, its impact can be painful individually as well as for the nation. Individually there is a loss of a paying job after retirement, loss of physical and mental fitness, and also occasionally the loss of social integration due to lack of mobility. For a nation, an aging population means a growing dependency ratio, a greater need of care, and more medical facilities for this age group. This article looks at the various economic and social implications of the aging population in Malaysia in general, and in the rural and urban setting specifically. The paper focuses on a research sample of 132 (66 rural, 66 urban) elderly persons. The findings suggest that the demographic patterns of the elderly vary from the rural to the urban setting, with differing issues that need to be addressed to alleviate problems encountered related to loneliness, lack of financial stability, and emotional strain. Policy suggestion will be geared toward providing a solution to problems at hand as well as aiding the working group members to prepare and sustain a comfortable livelihood for the aged in their later years.

This study investigates the impact of the ageing population on the economic growth for short- and long-run estimations in Malaysia, by using time series data from 1981 to 2019. This study adopts the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method with the Bound test approach for the long-run estimation and the vector error correction model for the short-run estimation. Several econometric diagnostic tests were applied for validation and the appropriate model specification basis. The estimated result of this work indicates that the age dependency ratio proxy for the ageing population variable has a significant negative impact on economic growth in Malaysia. A 1% increase in old age dependency will decline gross domestic product's (GDP's) growth by an average of 6.6043% at the 5% level of significance. Hence, an increase in the ageing population will impede economic growth. Although controlled variables (e.g., physical capital, labour participation, and human capital) have a significant positive impact on economic growth in Malaysia, there is evidence of a long- and short-run relationship between economic growth and the ageing population variable, and also the control variable.