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Community Education is a way for people to enhance their lives and communities through learning and collaboration. It advocates providing opportunities for parents, families, local community members, schools, businesses, and other organizations to become partners in addressing educational and community concerns. The goal is to improve the quality of life and build a "sense of community" through civic and neighborhood enhancement projects and the operation of schools as Community Schools, functioning as community learning centers.

Community Education is based on the mutually interdependent relationship between the home, school, work, and community as they interact in phases of human development and community improvement. Although each has a specific role, the areas of influence overlap. The home's influence does not cease when an individual goes out the door nor does the school's cease when the individual leaves the school grounds. Similarly, the home and the school exist in a community that is affected by the economics—positive and negative—of the work environment.

Components of Community Education

Lifelong Learning

• Implementing the principal that learning continues throughout life.
• Providing formal and informal learning opportunities for people of all ages--preschoolers, K-12 students, and adult learners.
• Providing programs and services for all community members, often in an intergenerational setting.

Community Involvement

• Promoting a sense of civic responsibility that includes using the community as a classroom.
• Encouraging community self-help and community enhancement efforts.
• Providing opportunities for community members to develop and use their leadership skills.
• Promoting the inclusion of diverse populations in all aspects of community life.
• Encouraging community involvement in local decision making.

Efficient Use of Resources

• Efficient and effective use of all the community's physical, financial, technical, and human resources (including those of schools') to meet diverse community needs.
• Reducing unnecessary duplication of services by promoting collaborative relationships and partnership efforts among schools, organizations, and agencies to meet educational and human service needs.

Community Education

Education Leadership

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