Evaluation of non-formal education in Ecuador, v. 1 : executive summary

and the University of Massachusetts. Goals in this exploration of non- formal education were: 1) To create and field-test a range of non-formal education techniques using local institutions to im- plement and support these techniques in a field situation; 2) to develop a number of non-formal educational methodologies which can be used by existing Ecuadorian institutions; 3) to implement selected methodologies with local institutions, including the Ministry of Education, with an on-going evaluation system desig- ned to provide both current as well as terminal evidence of pro- gram impact; 4) to make these methodologies available to other interested agencies and to provide support for their efforts; 5) to devise and test training procedures of carrying out these methodologies and of using the support materials; and 6) to pro- vide techinical assistance in non-formal education to the Minis- try of Education, and to assist the Ecuadorian Government and other Ecuadorian institutions development non-formal education projects. The actual activities carried out during this project are examined and evaluated here in a question-and-answer format. Among the materials used in this project were games, and human "facilitators" were trained to implement them. Each year of the project, the scope and goals of both the games and facilitators were evaluated and often modified or increased as needed. Now as an office of the Ministry of Education, the Non-Formal project expects to pursue its original goals. However, the scope of its work will be more limited, as will the opportunity to explore highly experimental non-formal models; the accent will be on con- solidation and systemization of the games made to date.