THE 2030 agenda for sustainable development sets striving objectives to facilitate change towards our world, balancing the economic, social, political and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.
To step up to the challenges posed by these objectives and to ensure no one is left out, it is positionally pivotal that local communities participate and get involved in the planning and management of sustainable development and the promotion of sustainable attitudes and lifestyles.
The 2030 agenda encompasses all aspects of our lives, which implies that learning, if it is to contribute fully to this agenda, must be seen as both lifelong and life-wide.
Community-based learning acts as a catalyst for sustainable development and active citizenship. It enables people to take self-directed and applied action to tackle the challenges of a changing, increasingly global village.
It also helps communities gain new knowledge, skills and competencies to improve their lives in sustainable ways, for example through eco-friendly farming, the agriculture ministry and agri-civil societies can promote sustainable and environmental friendly farming practices that at the same time increase chances of higher yield and output and by further working to address social and economic inequalities.
Learning sanctions people to make informed decisions that can lead to innovative and transformative actions. By developing increased shared ownership of their community's future, they are able, through learning, to actively participate in the development of their own communities while also interpreting and responding to pressing global issues.
A community approach to lifelong learning for sustainable development aids people to re-identify, re-evaluate and further develop local and indigenous knowledge, based on existing and still-relevant but frequently neglected traditional wisdom, norms, beliefs, values and rules, which community-based learning can help transform.
Community Learning Centres (CLCs) are dynamic in different cultures and societies and play a pivotal role in easing and expanding access to lifelong learning. People of all ages, from diverse cultural, economic, social and ethnic backgrounds, benefit from taking part in learning activities organised by or at CLCs.
CLCs are multi-learning institutions which provide basic, intermediate and at times advanced learning opportunities for community members. These learning opportunities could be basic adult literacy classes, computer literacy, ICDL, basic maths, income generating activities, and formal education learning materials, etc. In the Namibian context, these come in the form of multi-purpose learning centres.
While there are variations, common features of CLCs are: (1) solid community ownership, (2) diverse learning delivery and (3) low costs in involvement and participation in learning activities. CLCs can help create the foundation for a learning society characterised by social inclusivity, active citizenry and self-development.
The proximity of community learning venues to home or the workplace is one more key enabler of sustained participation in learning and education. For many adult learners, distance or inaccessibility of learning can be insurmountable barriers.
Although many CLCs organise only a limited number of courses, usually in more scientific fields or life skills education, in some communities they support a range of social cohesion and sustainable development activities.
Within the scope of community learning, there exists principles which outline the core values of what community learning is and actions that are indicative thereof. This constitutes a shared vision of education for sustainable development on a more community level.
The first principle is Responding: Benefactors of community-based learning are often at the forefront in responding to emerging issues experienced by local and rural communities. This has led to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) being identified with important economically viable environmental issues.
This responsive endeavour to specific issues is, however, only the starting point for learning. ESD has a deeper role in facilitating understanding of the complex and interconnected nature of cause and effect, as well as in devising a suitable response.
The second principle is Transforming: The contest of ESD for community-based learning benefactors involves not just changes to the way we learn. It also commands a complete transformation of the social, economic, political and cultural systems that have contributed to the issues this agenda is trying to see through.
Part of this transformation will require that we embrace new ways of teaching and learning made possible by new technologies; parts will involve changes to the way we work, parts will also involve communities having to integrate new norms, beliefs and values to their existent indigenous knowledge.
The last concept is Engaging: Community-based ESD acknowledges that the multifaceted nature of the issues at stake commands engagement with different disciplines and knowledge systems in order to identify comprehensive, long-lasting solutions. Engaging these different approaches productively requires working in partnership with different players both within and outside the immediate communities.
This, in turn, demands recognition that there will often be more than one perspective involved. Allowing different generations, sectors and cultures to contribute knowledge and ways of learning is vital to finding sustainable solutions.
In the final analysis, it remains central to understand that development is only as effective as those who participate in it. Through using community-based approaches, this increases the reservoir of knowledge to a more people-centred and collective result-driven sustainable development process.
* Dylan Mukoroli is a managing partner at Social Chapter Consulting. He can be reached at (ddamice@gmail.com)
