The oldest executive partners of the Kemper Foundation are the local UNESCO Clubs that are charged with the management of Community learning Centers. For our program for the deaf, we also work together with associations of parents and friends of deaf people. In this form of collaboration we see the opportunity to make effective progress. Achieving “a better life” with our efforts will depend on these local partners. Members of UNESCO clubs are mostly young people who selflessly promote the objectives of UNESCO and the UN in general. These clubs function independently of UNESCO.
A number of these UNESCO clubs have committed themselves to manage a Community learning Center in their village or district to provide additional non-formal education and to achieve UNESCO’s objectives.
Community learning Centers
A Community learning Center is a village hall managed by an association of young people from a local UNESCO club. Various educational and cultural activities take place there. It is a complex of modest but attractive buildings on a basically fenced-off site in a village or forgotten urban district.
The origins of the Community learning Centers
In order to actually respond to the call to promote “Education for All”, Jan de Bosch Kemper launched an original project from UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education in Africa in 1990: the “Literacy Caravan”. The aim of this was to promote the distribution of teaching and reading materials.
Where the Caravan passed, an interactive exhibition of teaching and reading materials was organized and the foundation stone was also laid for a “Community learning Center”. Here UNESCO Clubs undertook literacy activities. Currently, these clubs are involved in the implementation of KS programs and these Learning Hostels are developing as cultural centers with a multitude of activities of local interest.
Learning Hostels in Senegal
| Learning Hostels in working order |
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