Education state and perspectives of the community of Leliūnai

When the independence of the Republic of Lithuania was proclaimed in 1990, the problem of the development of rural communities became very actual. Now it has a direct reference to the main problems of our country - strengthening the democracy, forming civil society, developing of municipalities, intergrading into the EU, raising and bringing up cultural, educational and economical wellbeing of rural residents in Lithuania. Lithuanian government gives much attention to the restoration and strengthening of the rural communities (new laws, decisions and programmes are adopted). There is no doubt that the rural communities and other nongovernmental organizations (NGO) ought to join the process of quick development themselves. In 2006 a research in Leliūnai rural Neighbourhood community was carried out. The task of the research was to find out the people’s views, living in a little town, two settlements and in four villages on the activities of the rural communities and of the NGO and to define their expectations and to get new empiric knowledge that would be' necessary for solving the tasks while developing the problems of the rural communities. 240 residents took part in the research. The statistic data was collected by means of a questionnaire. The research showed the peoples’ views on the problems concerning the development of the communities and on the social role and activities of NGO. 68 % of the respondents thought that NGO had an important role, 84 % said that they were useful for the society, 53 % - that they represent the interest of all the rural people. Although the majority of the population understand the role of rural communities during the time of the research. Only 49 % of responded belonged to it (16 % of them belong to other local NGO). 35 % of them didn’t belong to the community. In spite of high evaluation (...it is necessary for society, for the residents and so on...), high social prestige of NGO, only 77 % of respondents were sure that ^hen solving their problems it is necessary to rely on the rural community. There are suppositions that at the favourable conditions a lot of country people would join the activities of rural communities even at present. 84 % of the respondents gave the positive answers, only 16 % didn’t want to take part in such activities. Some social demographic factors have a great impact on the activity (or passiveness) of the people. However, the greatest cause is the nature of their work, their employment and the sex of the resident. Summarizing the investigation we can say that the views of the residents on the development of Neighbourhood community and its activity are very positive. However, not all of them take part in this activity. So the proper sociability of a large part of the inhabitants must be still acquired