Suwon, South Korea—
In Suwon, South Korea, nearly 600 lifelong learning centres offer opportunities to learn and share information on career prospects and adult learning courses.
The centres promote the concept of “enjoyment from learning and happiness from sharing” and provide learning opportunities for people of every age.
The initiative aims to help people from disadvantaged groups progress in society and increase accessibility to learning spaces.
To ensure that Suwon’s adult learning system aligns with local priorities and the needs of the people, the city engages and collaborates with actors and local community members in various ways. The aim is to create an environment in the city that is human-centred and conducive to learning, meeting a wide range of learning needs and offering a wide variety of learning opportunities.
The City of Suwon offers subsidies for lifelong learning and initiatives developed by its own citizens. Residents with new lifelong learning programme ideas can develop project plans and submit them to the city government. After review, the city grants funding to implement promising adult learning projects. In addition, Suwon was the first city in Korea to set up a planning and implementation team consisting of local community members, known as the Urban Policy Citizens’ Planning team. The team, comprising representatives from the 44 neighbourhoods in Suwon, shares ideas on lifelong learning and policy implementation with the city government for consideration. The representatives usually receive these ideas from roundtable meetings involving up to 500 local community members. These meetings are important as they support the alignment of lifelong learning to local needs.
Suwon also engages with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and other local actors. NGOs can apply for public subsidies to run lifelong learning initiatives. When their applications are successful, the city requires that these NGOs report on their performance, outcomes and budget use. Moreover, Suwon innovatively works with teachers in the city’s adult learning system. To become an adult learning teacher, the applicant undergoes mandatory theoretical and practical training for a year. After this training, participants become certified “civic lifelong learning teachers”. Over a thousand teachers work in Suwon, and interviewed citizens described this teaching arrangement as a great opportunity for older generations to actively engage with society. In addition, women who have left the labour market often use this opportunity to return to work.
This initiative shows that adult learning initiatives can benefit from citizens motivation and interest, which allows some form of bottom-up development.
OECD (2022), "Future-proofing adult learning systems in cities and regions: A policy manual for local governments", OECD Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Papers, No. 2022/03, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/11fa26cc-en.
