Community Development Education and its Enhancement for Quality of Life

Description

Community education, also referred to as community-based education or community learning and development, refers to an organization's initiatives to support learning and social development that engage individuals and groups in their communities through a variety of formally and informally structured methods. The fact that programmes and activities are designed in consultation with communities and participants is a common characteristic. The goal of community learning and development is to increase people's ability to enhance their quality of life via their actions as individuals, groups, and communities of all ages. Their capacity to take part in democratic processes is crucial to this.

Community education includes all professions and methods connected with directing educational and developmental initiatives inside local communities as opposed to within formal educational establishments like schools, colleges, and universities. Community education is sometimes referred to as informal education, whereas the latter is known as the formal education system. Although it can be supplied more extensively, it has long been criticised for several components of the formal education system for failing huge portions of the people in all countries. It was especially concerned with bringing learning and development chances to disadvantaged places.

There are many different job titles, and employers include public authorities and non-profit organisations that are supported by the government and independent grant-making bodies. Through outreach efforts in communities, schools, colleges, and universities may also help community learning and development. Since the 1960s, the community schools movement has been a prominent supporter of this. For many years, some institutions and colleges have operated outreach adult education programmes in the neighbourhood. Since the 1970s, many other professions that work with more disadvantaged groups and communities and have been influenced by community education and community development approaches have also adopted the prefix word "community." These professions range from young workers and health professionals to planners and architects.

Over many years, community educators have produced a variety of techniques and methods for dealing with underprivileged individuals in particular in local communities. These include non-traditional educational approaches, community organising, and teamwork abilities. Practitioners have been influenced by structural analyses of the causes of disadvantage and poverty, such as inequalities in the distribution of wealth, income, land, etc., and especially political power and the need to mobilise people power to effect social change, since the 1960s and 1970s through the various anti-poverty programmes in both developed and developing countries. The UK has played a crucial role in hosting the two main international organisations that represent community education and community development throughout the history of community education and community learning and development.

These include the International Community Education Association, which was housed in the Community Education Development Center in Coventry, United Kingdom, for a number of years. The International Association for Community Development, which continues to have its headquarters in Scotland, joined ICEA and CEDC in closing their doors. There was some consideration given to the possibility of these two organisations merging in the 1990s. In other nations, the phrase "community learning and development" has not gained much attention. Despite the fact that community learning and development methodologies are acknowledged globally. Organizations including the UN, WHO, OECD, World Bank, Council of Europe, and EU have acknowledged the importance of these methodologies and approaches for local social, economic, cultural, environmental, and political development.