Attacking Rural Poverty

# Sinopse

No problem is of greater worldwide concern today than the poverty that afflicts one-third of the world’s people. It is not simply a problem of inadequate income; it is a problem of inadequate development. The gap between cities and rural areas is another; and the problem rural areas are yet another. Only through concerted efforts to develop rural as well as urban areas can the poorer nations begin to advance beyond subsistence.

Recognizing the importance of rural development, the World Bank commissioned the International Labour Organisation to prepare a study whose focus is on educational efforts, outside the formal school system, which offer potential for rural development, modernizing production techniques, and creating productive employment for peasants, craftsmen, and small entrepreneurs.

Based on field examination of nonformal education programs throughout the developing world, this study concludes that such programs are an indispensable and potent instrument of rural development. To be fully effective, however, in creating the right climate and the determination to build a better future, should be able to mobilize the economies and human energies for a considerable expansion of nonformal education in the developing countries and privity closer links with nonformal activities outside the school system.