Educational administration

The Uganda Rural Literacy and Community Development Association (URLCODA) was founded in 2009 by the Uganda Community Libraries Association (UgCLA). The community aims to provide information services via publications and special activities targeted at the needs of local populations. Most of the initiatives aim to promote literacy and are planned to be relevant to a set of predetermined objectives.

Shanghai was the first Chinese city to adopt the learning city concept: in 1999, it began to promote the lifelong development of all its citizens. At the level of policy and administration, this involved devising leadership mechanisms, reforming the city’s legal system and publishing guidance documents. On the ground, Shanghai began to offer a greater variety of learning opportunities to its citizens, including different methods of classroom teaching, digital learning, learning groups and study tours; all were designed to encourage participation in lifelong learning.

The initiative of transforming Gelsenkirchen from an industrial hub into a learning city was implemented as an attempt to revive a city suffering from high unemployment rates that had reached 15 per cent by 2016. In 1998, after careful consideration of the current situation, aGEnda 21 was initiated to increase the city’s sustainability and incorporate new learning strategies that would improve the quality of life. Since 2008, efficient measures have been implemented to promote lifelong learning based on education for sustainable development (ESD). In 2016, more than 120 businesses, institutions and organizations signed a Joint Declaration on Learning as a confirmation of commitment to the development of the city and the community.

Lifelong learning villages are an initiative implemented in Mali by a French non-government organization Jeunesse et Développement, enabling young adults to participate in global development projects, with support from the British Embassy, the Stromme Foundation, Mali Development Group, the Methodist Relief and Development Fund, and DVV International. The establishment of vocational training and learning circles within the villages referred to as VITAL (‘Villages de l’Apprentissage Tout Au Long de la Vie’, French for ‘Villages of Learning Throughout Life’) aimed to increase the level of literacy and provide knowledge and skills that would benefit the local population (UIL, 2015).

CommUniversity, an initiative of the University of Technology (UTech) in Jamaica, is an ‘outreach intervention to create a local community-university network to collaborate learning, exchange of ideas and knowledge for enhancement of life and prosperity, through partnerships with public, private agencies, and individuals’ (Bartley-Bryan, 2013, p. 2). The concept of the CommUniversity is aligned to one of the UTech strategic goals for national impact: assisting local communities in building their capacities for learning, growth and development.