{"id":3701,"date":"2016-07-20T15:06:11","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T15:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cel\/?p=3701"},"modified":"2016-07-21T08:51:44","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T08:51:44","slug":"forging-a-university-aided-indigenous-community-education-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/2016\/07\/20\/forging-a-university-aided-indigenous-community-education-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Forging a university-aided indigenous community education policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UoA25 Research Development Funding recently supported a\u00a0pilot study in Cameroon on the subject “Forging a university-aided Indigenous community education policy: Village elders, informal education and social development in Cameroon”<\/em>. The rationale for this study hinges on the fact that state-building in the horn of Africa requires a rethink and striking a balance between traditional and modern institutions within a framework of interconnectedness (Englebert, 2005; Bereketeab, 2011; Mbah, 2016). Village elders engender social resilience and pivotal assets in informal education and community development transactions (Fonchingong, C. 2016), as well as indigenousness has been advanced as a pathway to empowerment for \u2018marginalized\u2019 communities (Ndahinda, 2011).<\/p>\n

The pilot study which ran from the 06th – 15th of July 2016 also had an\u00a0objective of forming the basis of an application for external funding. It unpicks the role and instrumentality of the university, community elders and traditional authority governance in contemporary social development. The main proposition of the study revolves around the centrality of informal education methods and strategies that are deployed by village elders in community settings. Utilising a range of community assets and resources, elders use their community leverage to provide social justice with attendant outcomes on decreasing social inequality whilst maintaining a heightened sense of community education, cohesion and stability. The conceptual ideas of asset-based approaches, indigenous knowledge, social capital and its connections to poverty (Eversole et al. 2005) also resonate with the\u00a0study. The pilot study took place in one discrete location in Cameroon, the Southwest region which is one of two English speaking regions hosting a state Anglo-Saxon university.\u00a0Sixteen participants from disparate backgrounds took part in semi-structured interviews\u00a0and these included traditional rulers, local elders and university lecturers.<\/p>\n

The key\u00a0guiding questions included the following:<\/p>\n