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.

Cork Learning City defines a Learning Neighbourhood as an area that has an ongoing commitment to learning, providing inclusive and diverse learning opportunities for whole communities through partnership and collaboration (O’Sullivan and Kenny, 2017). The Learning Neighbourhoods Programme aims to support and recognize lifelong learning across Cork City’s neighbourhoods.

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.

Since 2018, Cape Town, a city of 3.7 million people, has been experiencing an unprecedented drought. Cape Town’s water crisis was declared a national emergency when a decline in rainfall between 2015 and 2018 resulted in the worst droughts on record. The city announced a Day Zero – a point when the municipal water supply would be shut off. Thankfully, Day Zero never came, and the city’s largest water supplier, the Theewaterskloof Dam, was able to show an increase from 11 per cent of capacity on 9 March 2018, to 100 per cent on 2 October 2020 (Global Citizen, 9 October 2020).