Community development based on a learning community approach fosters the acquisition of information, knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that together build a community's capacity to successfully respond to, and direct, economic and social change. The six traditional purposes of community development are:

• Citizenship / civic education
• Health promotion
• Economic development
• Environmental/ecological sustainability
• Rural/urban development, and
• Social development/planning.

There is an emerging view of community economic development, named by some political economists as the Third Way, as a new way to analyze and act to prevent social exclusion and promote economic regeneration. It is based on communitarian values that:

• balance individual rights with civic responsibility
• emphasize the importance of decentralizing resources and power to the local community level
• recognize and use the intangible assets of the community "its social capital" to promote economic development and social inclusion.

In this approach to community economic development, attention is paid to all socioeconomic groups in the community including the poor who are given opportunities to upgrade their skills, and increase their self-reliance. As a consequence they draw less upon the welfare system for support, are more skilled and are better able to contribute to their regions� economy and consequently free up resources that can be diverted to other economic development initiatives.

The corporate sector has recognized for some time that an important factor, perhaps the most important factor, in determining a modern company�s success in a knowledge-based economy, is the intellectual capacity of its employees. Successful companies find ways to nurture and develop their intellectual capital. While the private sector has appropriated use of the term "intellectual capital", several of its key elements are found in communities, including:

• the collective value of the knowledge, skills and abilities of its members
• the potential of people to build upon their knowledge, experience and expertise
• core competencies that create unique competitive advantage for an organization [community]?
• the cumulative capacity of an organization [community]? to acquire, process and use knowledge that contributes to its success
• organizational [community]? systems, culture, or values that promote individual learning

Thus the intangible assets of the local community: the intellectual capacity, know-how, trust, networks and shared values of the residents, have been termed "social / intellectual capital". Social capital is defined as the societal networks, norms and trust that act as the social glue of local communities. It also serves as the lubricant for more efficient transactions nation-wide thus providing an economic competitive advantage for societies in which it is present in large measure.

Warrington Grid for Learning - Learning through volunteering A different kind of learning

Warrington, a city in the UK, has over 1000 voluntary organisations and community groups. These groups and organisations provide a wide range of services and activities, often focussed on the needs of a particular local area, or of a particular client group such as older people, children and families, people with disabilities. They range in size from small volunteer-led community groups or self-help groups, such as residents associations and parent and toddler groups to branches of "household name" charities such as Age Concern and the Citizens Advice Bureau. Some organisations do offer courses directly to the public, but many voluntary organisations also provide extensive training programmes for their volunteers, staff and trustees or service users. There is also the informal learning that takes place through being involved in setting-up and running an organisation, group or project. This type of learning is only available through the voluntary and community sector. Source: www.wgfl.org.uk

The Aspen Institute, one of the American leaders in the development and use of this notion, combines three types of community development in its operational definition of community capacity building, namely:

• economic development
• stewardship or environmental sustainability
• civic capacity or active citizenship

Throughout the Institute's exposition of the term is the need for communities to continuously learn in order to be resilient. Capacity building efforts focus on eight outcomes:

1. growing, diverse, inclusive citizen participation
2. an expanding leadership base
3. strengthened individual skills
4. widely shared vision
5. strategic community agenda (includes a plan)
6. consistent tangible progress toward goals
7. more effective community organizations and institutions
8. better resource utilization by the community

The concept that is central to both the notions of learning-based community development and of learning communities is that of lifelong learning.

The strength of a country, according to Fukuyama, lies not in its ethos of individualism but on the cohesiveness of its civil associations and communities. In this study, a definition of learning-based community development will adopt some of the elements of the OECD/UK models and will be characterized by the following features:

• a focus on geographic rather than virtual communities
• an emphasis on processes that promote individual and group learning within and across every sector of a community whether
  • civic
  • public (health, social services, libraries, museums etc.)
  • economic (private or cooperative)
  • education (from kindergarten to university)
  • voluntary/community
• learning how to build and sustain learning partnerships across all sectors
• learning how to promote and sustain citizen participation/involvement in setting, achieving and evaluating learning targets
• learning how to assess performance and set achievable/measurable objectives
• benchmarking best practice
• evaluating progress
• learning how to enable access to learning technologies so that all have
• basic computer literacy
• means of networking within and between learning communities here and abroad
• opportunities to use technology as a tool to achieve individual and community development purposes
• the equal valuing of learning, whether acquired in the community, the home or the classroom

Table 1 Adapted from: Learning-based Community Development: Lessons Learned for British Columbia. Source: http://members.shaw.ca (see .doc)

Table 2 - The Generic Learning Outcome system: measuring the outcomes and impact of learning in museums, archives and libraries : THE LEARNING IMPACT RESEARCH PROJECT (LIRP) Source: http://www.mla.gov.uk/action/learnacc

Unlike in formal education, museums, archives and libraries will not be able to make judgments about how much their users have learnt or how much progress they have made. However, users themselves will be able to make judgements about their own learning. They will be able to articulate what they found out and if that was what they were looking for. They can say whether they were inspired or had an enjoyable time. Collecting evidence of learning outcomes in museums, archives and libraries therefore must involve asking users how they feel about their own learning.

LIRP recognises that learners will have highly diverse learning outcomes. The Generic Learning Outcomes have been developed so that these individual outcomes can be captured and grouped into categories, thereby giving a rich picture of the impact of learning in museums, archives and libraries. Categorising the learning outcomes described by individual people into five broad generic outcomes enables the breadth of learning across the sector to be presented. LIRP has developed a system of Generic Learning Outcomes (GLOs?) to measure the impact of learning in museums, archives and libraries:

• Increase in knowledge and understanding
• Increase in skills
• Change in attitudes or values
• Evidence of enjoyment, inspiration and creativity
• Evidence of activity, behaviour, progression

During the piloting phase of LIRP fifteen museums, archives and libraries used the GLOs to carry out different kinds of evaluation and research. Evidence for each GLO was found in each organisation and no additional GLOs? were found to be necessary. Source: http://www.mla.gov.uk

Places of cultural heritage provide the viewer with an almost direct access to historical events. Critical interaction with such objects can help to develop awareness of one's own culture and historical background. This can foster an understanding of the complex web of national and international relations and circumstances which shape local developments and events. Environmental heritage can be regarded as an extension of cultural heritage. It can mean a variety of things, from a person's knowledge of her natural environment to the development of a critical awareness of the links between man and nature.

For the purpose of educational activities, however, environmental and cultural heritage need not be treated separately. Cultural and educational tourism programmes can include both learning about the culture and about the natural environment of the region in question. Such an approach allows for a better understanding of the interrelationship between developments in human society and changes in the natural environment. Places of cultural heritage as well as natural sites can be used as objects for such kinds of learning. By exploring the significance of such sites, learners can also develop their own sense of belonging to and being part of the history of their communities. Environmental and cultural learning can be part of an education project which examines current social and political issues as well as future-oriented ones. At the University of Naples, such education projects have been developed. They focus on the immediate environment of the participants. The Region of Tuscany is involved in a similar project together with the Greek ministry of education and the generality of Catalan. This joint initiative is entitled "Mediterranean routes for the environmental and cultural education of the European citizen".