Capacity Building and ALC/CLCs Network Workshop

On December 3 to 5, 2016 the Afghan National Association for Adult Education (ANAFAE) in cooperation with DVV International conducted a three days capacity building and planning workshop for the managers of the Adult and Community Learning Centres (ALCs and CLCs) in Mazar- e Sharif City.

All education activities of the ALCs and CLCs implemented in 2016 were reviewed during the workshop.

Most Education Centres successfully increased their outreach during the last 12 month and enlarged their education services for young adults. For example, more than 70.000 young learners took part in all education programmes in Mazar during this ending year. This is an increase of nearly 10 percent compared with last year.

The most promising developments were observed in the Community Learning Centres in Mazar. They are closely embedded in their communities. The families in the surrounding trust well in the quality of the education programmes offered by the CLCs. Therefore, the participation of young females in the education programmes of the CLCs is much higher than in the formal school system or in the Adult Learning Centres of ANAFAE. In most CLCs the percentage of young females is between 45 and 52 percent.

Of course, the managers of the Adult and Community Learning Centres also discussed the some important challenges while presenting their plans for the upcoming year 2017. Funding is decreasing, budgets are very tight, the coordination among the education centres of the Network of ALC and CLCs needs to be intensified and more cooperation is needed to give support to each other, to exchange and discuss best practices.

A new common outline of the teaching and lessons plans was presented by the Master Trainer team under the supervision of Mr. Shams Mohib, the Program Manager. The common teaching and lesson plans sets really new standards for the contents, the methodologies and the timing of the education services. This is another successful work completed during the last 3 month. Many Heads of Education Department were involved to develop the common standard framework and it was already successfully tested in some of the CLCs. Of course, it will take some time until all teachers are fully implementing the new standard but we are on good way. Several trainings will now be conducted for the teaching staff in the education centres. All managers of the ALCs and CLCs strongly support this positive development, this will make their education programmes even more attractive for young learners and will improve the quality of teaching and learning in their ALCs and CLCs.

All managers received appreciations for their personal engagement and of their teams. The four best education centres were specially honoured by the Programme Coordinators of ANAFAE and DVV International Mr. Mohib and Mr. Schur during this capacity building and planning workshop.

The four best education centres of 2016 are:

Community Learning Centre (CLC) 9, Community Learning Centre 1 and Community Learning Centre 10, all three in Mazar and the Women ALC form Kabul.