Reduced Inequalities

UNESA provides peer support and counselling for students with disabilities

UNESA SDGs Center · 20 October 2026

Universitas Negeri Surabaya (UNESA) provides a peer support and counselling programme for students with disabilities, an underrepresented group, run by its Pusat Unggulan Iptek Disabilitas (PUID) and the student activity unit UKM Peduli Disabilitas. UNESA trained and deployed dozens of student companions to accompany new students with disabilities at orientation in both 2025 and 2026, and its counselling service for students with disabilities, Konseling Madif (MADIF), remained an operating service reviewed by the university in September 2026.

Mentoring, counselling or peer support programme for students, staff or faculty from underrepresented groups

UNESA provides a peer support programme for students with disabilities through trained student companions deployed during new-student orientation (PKKMB). In August 2025, UNESA's disability centre trained and assigned 45 student companions across three campuses to mentor 47 incoming students with disabilities at university-level and faculty-level orientation, providing assistive devices such as canes, wheelchairs and speech-to-text applications alongside individualised support (Universitas Negeri Surabaya, 2025).

UNESA continued this peer support in 2026. From 21 to 23 August 2026 the student activity unit UKM Peduli Disabilitas trained its volunteers on disability types, sign language and individualised support methods, then deployed them to accompany students with disabilities through the 2026 PKKMB orientation (UKM Peduli Disabilitas / Pusat Unggulan Iptek Disabilitas, 2026).

UKM Peduli Disabilitas (UKMPD) is also documented in UNESA's official 2025 student-organisation and supervisor listing, which identifies the unit and its appointed faculty supervisor. This provides institutional evidence of the student-led support structure alongside the documented 2026 orientation activities (Universitas Negeri Surabaya, 2025).

UNESA also provides ongoing counselling for students with disabilities. At a meeting on 31 August 2026 to prepare study programmes for newly admitted students with disabilities, UNESA's disability centre confirmed peer mentoring for disabled students and its Konseling Madif (MADIF) digital counselling application as existing, currently operating services (Pusat Unggulan Iptek Disabilitas, 2026).

UNESA's Pusat Unggulan Iptek Disabilitas (PUID) also mentors students with disability. Acep Ovel Novari Beny of PUID mentored Mochammad Fadillah Akbar, a deaf Special Education student, in developing INCO-HUB, an idea for training deaf people and placing them in work in small coffee businesses, which won third place in the disability category of the 2026 National Outstanding Student Selection (Pilmapres) (Lentera Today, 2026).