Adult and Non-Formal Education Programmes of Non-Governmental Organizations for Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria: What can be learnt from the Practice?

Abstract

Non-governmental Organisations over the years have been complementing the effort of the government in solving the problem of poverty and illiteracy through education intervention programmes. Some of these programmes seem to be more successful than the government led programmes and if that is true, what can be learnt from the experiences of the NGOs to improve the provision of adult and non-formal education programmes for poverty alleviation and community development?. This paper therefore examines two NGOs programmes for poverty alleviation and community development. The study is a case study and the methodology adopted is the descriptive survey method. Focus Group Discussion (FDG), questionnaire, and observation were used to collect data and the information obtained was triangulated. From the findings, what can be learnt from the NGOs experiences were the use of participatory poverty assessment to identify the training needs of the poor adult learners, the combination of vocational skill training with entrepreneurship skill and personality development. It is therefore recommended that skill acquisition training programme for poverty alleviation and community development must be community based and well embedded to accommodate the divers training needs of individual and communities.      

Keywords: Poverty, Non-Formal Education, Andragogy, Training, Livelihood.