Potential of Non-Formal Education through Community Learning Centres throughout the World to Encourage Basic Literacy, Personal Development and Societal Inclusion

While disseminating good quality primary education for all by 2015 has been a worldwide target, over 780 million adults remain illiterate and 77 million primary-school aged children are still out of school. To ensure educational equity of these out of school children and illiterate adults, various forms of non-formal education have been promoted by a large number of stakeholders. UNESCO has also promoted community-based learning centres that are outside the scope of formal education and has provided various types of learning opportunities to encourage community development and thus to improve the quality of life. These non-formal learning centres are called Community Learning Centres (CLCs), Community Education Centres (CECs) and Community Multimedia Centres (CMCs). These institutions have acted as an empowerment gateway connecting illiterate society to literate society and local society to global society. Due to regional diversity as well as the complexity of different community activities, however, sufficient comprehensive data have not yet been compiled concerning project histories, profiles, or evaluations. Therefore, this paper describes historical background and context for the emergence of UNESCO-related community learning activities followed by various types of activities, the impacts, strengths, and challenges of these community learning activities. A set of recommendations for potential rewarding non-formal education programs will also be described