ABSTRACT
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as part of the broader civil society sector, have played an important role in providing spaces for citizenship participation in community development and socioeconomic transformation. Many NGOs, particularly in the global South, engage in community development work, and become involved in adult education. This chapter traces the emergence of adult education in the Emesco Development Foundation (EDF), an indigenous Ugandan NGO. The chapter observes that adult education practices in EDF reflect many core features of critical education paradigm. These include respecting the knowledge and experiences of community members, harnessing community indigenous knowledge, facilitation rather than top-down instruction from experts, and dialogic pedagogy. The chapter also points out how the evolution and development of these critical education practices was driven and shaped by contextual forces. While critical education was not planned in any deliberate manner, it evolved in tandem with shifts from resource provision to capacity building in EDF. The narrative of this evolution presented in this chapter also discuss contextual factors which limit the full realization of critical education’s potential.
