S
tr
engthening C
ommunit
y L
ear
ning C
en
tr
es thr
ough Link
ages and Net
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or
ks: A S
yn
thesis of Six C
oun
tr
y R
epor
ts
Other distinctive features on a per country basis are as follows:
Japan:
Being different from the rest, the Japan report focused on the evolution of a single
CLC, born out of the unease of a conservative local farming community over the
introduction into their community of a college, later to become Matsumoto University.
A process of gradually winning over the support of the community led to the
evolution of a CLC, and slowly this CLC was turned over more and more to community
participation and ownership as a centre not only for continuing education, but also
for all forms of common community services. With strong support from the students
and staff of the nearby university, the CLC gained strength, usefulness and credibility.
As an outcome, the relations and collaboration between the university and the local
community improved dramatically.
China:
The distinctive feature of the China report, aside from its excellent overview, is its
approach to study CLC "clusters" in five provinces instead of individual CLCs. In the
description of these five provinces, however, several examples of individual CLCs were
used as illustrative case studies. These case studies serve to illustrate the similarities
and also the differences in how the five provinces manage and structure their CLCs,
how they establish linkages, and in what kinds of activities they are involved. The
study also makes a distinction of CLC types: those coming from a natural village centre
model, those from a township-centred model and those from a school-centred model.
A useful set of nine recommendations concludes this report.
Bangladesh:
The distinctive feature of this report is the highlighting of the primary role of NGOs in
the development and expansion of CLCs in that country. The report goes into great
detail about the actual structures and linkages of the CLCs, and uses charts and tables
to enumerate the inventory of partners and collaborators. There is great detail on
the CLCs themselves, including survey results concerning their physical structures,
facilities available, connectivity to electricity and information technology, and so on.
It also gives a sense of the centres' scope by listing numbers of beneficiaries reached
(broken down by gender) and types of programmes offered.
Indonesia:
A unique feature of the Indonesian report is its decision to study not only individual
CLCs, but also to study what it calls CLC network institutions. So aside from its analysis
of the 29 CLCs studied, it also analyzed three networks, one for the prostitute network,
one for the Communication Forum, and one for the Outlet Network, which focused on
marketing and business development. Because of the complexity of these networks,
even more detail, more charts, and more diagrams were employed to identify the many
linkages involved. Helpful sections in this report included listings of key personnel per