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Despite all the 'tom-toming' of the benefits of women's literacy, adult literacy is low on the Indian Government's list of priorities and a low priority for civil society organisations as well. The gap between the rhetoric of policies and the ground level reality is significant. After the much-touted successes of the literacy campaigns of the late 1980s and 1990s, the Government's subsequent continuing education profile failed to take off. Despite all the institutional apathy, adult literacy and education remains a powerful force of inspiration, hope and empowerment for hundreds of thousands of Indian citizens. In this article, the author draws on her experiences of working with Nirantar, a resource centre for gender and education, located in New Delhi, and juxtaposes the narrative with the journey of Shanti, an adult learner, from being a non-literate tribal woman to a new life as a journalist.

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The quality of initial and continuing training for adult educators is an issue that is crucial to the development of adult education. This article considers the issue of training adult educators in light of the CONFINTEA V (the international conference on adult education held in Hamburg in 1997) recommendations and proposes some issues to consider from the perspective of countries in the South, especially in Africa. The factors shaping the development of training for the post-CONFINTEA adult educator are illustrated in a case study of Botswana's experience. The author suggests that CONFINTEA V failed to adequately recognise the importance of properly trained adult educators to the implementation of its proposed strategies and that this important area should be addressed in the follow-up to the conference.

Reports on CONFINTEA V are indexed at TD/INT 61.71, TD/IRD 88.118 and TD/INT 59.65. Show less

The German Adult Education Association's Institute for International Cooperation (DVV International) has been in existence for 40 years. The organisation was established to share ideas and experience in adult education with adult educators and organisations from other countries and to help support their work with technical and financial resources in addition to expertise. Over the years, DVV International has become a major instrument of development cooperation and a key player in the arena of international adult education. It is a reliable partner for adult education providers which lack sufficient resources of their own and are accordingly in need of support. It is also a leading advocate for the field in general in the constant struggle to maintain a place for adult education in the broader context of evolving education policy. This article looks back over the last 40 years and highlights some of the major achievements. Show less

Since the end of the 1980s, DVV International has been working with partners in adult education in countries in transition on the difficult task of adapting to new circumstances. This article provides an overview of how countries in Eastern Europe have coped with transition in very different ways in the past decade within their own cultural, political, economic and social frameworks and describes how their vocational education systems work. The West's vista of a monolithic Eastern Bloc was wrong from the start, and highly in contrast to the region's appearance today in its immense diversity. The article concludes with some general ideas on the future of vocational education.

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This article makes a detailed discussion of two different approaches to adult education and literacy: the Standard strategy, a 10-year literacy campaign (launched in 1994) aimed to enable adults to learn how to read and write Arabic and to use written arithmetic; and the Capacity Enhancement for Lifelong Literacy (CELL) strategy which aimed to: (a) teach reading, writing and written arithmetic at least as efficiently and effectively as the Standard programme; (b) promote community, social and economic development and to reduce poverty, especially for women and especially in very poor and disadvantaged rural communities; and (c) to prepare the General Authority for Literacy and Adult Education (GALAE) officers to mainstream the new pattern of operations across the country. Both strategies were sponsored by the GALAE of the Egyptian Government. The article discusses the progress of these programs and presents some findings on their outcomes and effectiveness. Show less

Through this paper ASPBAE aims to set out some parameters on the discourse on the quality-resourcing relationship in adult learning. This paper was developed mainly from a discussion paper prepared by Prof. Alan Rogers for an electronic email discussion of ASPBAE members and other CSOs [civil society organisations] active in the UNESCO NGO [non-government organisation] CC/EFA [Collective Consultation/Education for All] network in the last quarter of 2004; and drawing largely upon material listed in the select bibliography. It is also informed by reflections from several ASPBAE face to face consultations on adult literacy in the course of the last year. The conclusions underscored here are ASPBAE's own.

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In educational research and practice, discussions of adult education have in recent years increasingly focused on matters of informal learning. In this context, the question also arises of the recognition to be given to competencies gained in this way in comparison with those acquired formally, and the criteria to be applied to certificating them. The author puts forward three models. Prof. Joachim Knoll is Professor Emeritus of Adult Education, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum. He has supported the work of the IIZ/DVV for many years and is a member of the Advisory Board for International Affairs of the German Adult Education Association. In 2004, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Free University of Berlin.

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Everywhere, skills transform lives, generate prosperity and promote social inclusion. And if there is one lesson the global financial crisis has taught us, then it is that we cannot simply bail ourselves out of an economic crisis, we cannot solely stimulate ourselves out of a crisis and we cannot just 'print money' our way out of a crisis. A much stronger bet for countries to grow and develop in the long run is to equip more people with better skills to collaborate, compete and connect in ways that drive their lives and their societies.

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In Laos, as in many other countries, there is a contradiction between the broad needs of informal career-oriented and income-generating education and the vanishing, comparatively small, formal education sector, as well as the non-formal and informal area for which the goals and methods must yet largely be explored in order to get accurate data for decision-making and the setting of educational priorities.

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How can adults gain new insights and learn new things from their own experiences through direct involvement? For this process, the author stresses the importance of applying the knowledge acquired in practice, and of individuals' actual relationship to everyday life, and the overriding importance of conveying social skills such as willingness to innovate, creativity, reliability, etc. She thus provides an answer to the question whether the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) method can meet these requirements. In doing so, she describes two projects: the largely rural education centres and pilot activities in two villages in which this participatory approach is being tried out.

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