Educational institutions

As Thailand ranks second in having the most rapidly growing ageing population, the Cheongdoi municipality decided to take necessary steps to care for and provide development opportunities for its elderly population. With a very limited time to prepare a response to demographic change, all sectors require economic and social restructuring and enhanced collaboration to address the needs of an elderly society (Punyakaew et al., 2019).

The community colleges and universities in the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina in the south of Brazil emerged between 1940 and 1960 as community-based initiatives with the intention of engaging the local population seeking access to higher education. The distinctiveness of community universities (often referred to as Community Higher Education Institutions, CHEIs) is reflected in their hybrid state: combining the characteristics of both state and private organizations, they cannot be defined as either. Their non-profit and non-religious status, as well as their hybrid governing mode and their aims of social, economic and cultural development, ensure inclusion and result in management structures that enable local community representation and a democratic decision-making process. (Fioreze and McCowan, 2018).

Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (TU Delft) started an Open Educational Resource (OER) that includes courses on clean water technology for developing countries. These resources have been updated by universities in South Africa, Singapore, the Antilles and Indonesia to include information on water-treatment processes from their regions, making a collaborative resource on drinking-water engineering available online to anyone who wishes to learn more.

Volkshochschulen (VHS) are adult learning centres founded on principles of liberal education and offering a range of programmes, including languages, general education and cultural learning. In addition, they increasingly provide vocational courses (EAEA, 2011). Since VHS are local institutions overseen by municipalities, they serve as community meeting points for neighbours to interact and build relationships and trust. The approximately 900 adult education centres in Germany offer around 700,000 events a year – courses and lectures, study trips and excursions. With around nine million participants, adult education centres are the largest provider of general adult education in Germany (DVV, 2011).

Community Learning Centres (CLCs) were introduced in Myanmar to ensure continuous learning and community development for out-of-school populations, with the concept ‘By them, With them, For them’ (Myanmar Education Consortium, 2013, p. 6). With support from UNDP and UNESCO, a small-scale pilot project enabled 31 Community Learning Centres to be set up to provide non-formal education and community development services in rural areas where access to education was low. Between 1995 and 2012, Myanmar set up over 3,000 CLCs.