From LearningHearts
Welcome... Community centres reflect the challenges of a continuously changing rural landscape and are essential cornerstones of rural communities. They play a key role in maintaining a stimulating learning environment in the rural area, as in many regions they are one of the few facilities and meeting points. These venues have different names: village halls, kulturhus, etc. Besides a broad range of other activities, these centres offer or facilitate non-formal and formal education: basic skills, entrepeneurship, courses for elderly people, training for local organisations and volunteers, etc.
The Learning Heart Partnership aimed to research and analyse the role of Community Centres of different types across the partner countries in contributing to both the learning needs and the social and cultural well-being of rural communities. The Partnership explored the way in which such centres were established and maintained, the target groups and Centre users, the kinds of activities offered and taken up and the way in which they contributed to community cohesion and well-being. In particular we researched the way in which Centres facilitated non-formal and formal education, basic skills, entrepreneurship and how they identified and included hard-to-reach groups, including older people, young people and those who lack confidence in formal or traditional education. It acknowledged that Community Centres provided key infrastructures in rural areas which might otherwise be disadvantaged or poorly served in relation to services.
The Partnership identified some major barriers to the potential role of Community centres, particularly:
- The depopulation of rural areas by younger people and inward migration of older people
- Changes in society, such as the reduction in support for structures which had previously supported rural communities, such as village shops, organised religion and a reduction in the number of village primary and secondary schools
- The rapid development of the internet and home entertainment systems which could discourage people from becoming involved in community activities
- Government policies and priorities that might promote the 'skills for employment' agenda over other non-formal learning.
In Learning Heart partners will focus on the educational role of community centres in order to build up or strengthen this role for the whole community, especially responding to the needs of the low-skilled population, volunteers and groups that find traditional education venues a barrier to learning.
About this Site
This site represents a key output of the project. It is divided into two sections
Challenges and Opportunities for Rural Communities
Highlights the key areas discussed by the partners. It provides a brief context to the issue and information on case studies from across the partners countries and beyond on how to address these issues. The aim is to provide inspiration for others facing these challenges as well as learning on specific models of how to address these problems.
Support For Communities
This section provides communities with links to project development materials to help them develop, manage and evaluate their own projects. The partners identified that many local groups were not equipped to develop responses to these challenges themselves. As well as gaps in knowledge around what initiatives are effective the project highlighted gaps in what were often general project development and management skills. It was felt by partners that a range of materials already existed so rather than duplicate the decision taken was to provide a framework for signposting similar to a standard project cycle description.
