In my opinion, to make CLCs sustainable for LLL activities, the important factors should be:
- Flexible policy support from the national government, especially the practice of an official act in which CLCs and equivalent social educational institutions are regulated
- Sufficient financial support from levels of government. Money talks anyway.
- Proactivity by the CLCs themselves
Feedback & comments are highly welcomed :-)
I think we need to begin to rethink our understanding of the concepts of "community" "learning" and "center" in the context of a changing world where learning via technology can happen anywhere, anytime and on any topic. Our old models/paradigms of what constitutes a "CLC" thus need to be flexible enough to embrace these new learning opportunities, learning spaces, and learning modalities, while at the same time still support life long learning opportunities for those without access to technology. Challenging..... !
Well, then shall we coin something new such as the "Cyber Community Learning Center"?
By the way, following Philip's comment, do you think we should make a clear conceptual division between community learning centres in the urban areas (Urban CLC) and those in the remote areas (I have not come up with any term for this yet)? This is to take into account their huge differences in terms of location, demography, technology accessibility and many other factors.
To me, sustainable community learning centre must offer relevant course to meet the demand of the community at large.
In addition, the programmes offer will gain more acceptance and interest from t he community if it is recognised by the qualification agency in respective countries.