When there is a diffusion of ICT enabled services in the community such as government services, there is a knock on effect in the formal education system where greater demand is created for ICT. This acts as a catalyst for the creation of knowledge societies as it empowers the community at all levels to engage in continuous and lifelong learning. The fifth essay in the series on ICT in Education in India and South Asia by InfoDev provides a very thorough account of ICT in Non Formal Education (NFE) in the region including snapshots of different initiatives as well as its evolution, delivery modes, critical success factors and key learnings. Non formal education has long been considered the bedrock of basic education for the mass of adults and children beyond the reach of the formal school system in the India and South Asia. More recently, EFA stakeholders have realised how critical a role NFE plays in the achievement of EFA and MDG goals - not least because it facilitates life-long learning, community empowerment and diverse learning needs, all of which are in demand in a rapidly changing society. NFE initiatives are focused on marginalized groups and have traditionally been employed to tackle literacy, training of health workers, and capacity building under the rural community development projects, and ICT plays a very important role in this effort. The three main types of learning spaces where ICT is used to deliver NFE are Telecentres, Community Multimedia Centers (CMCs) and Community Learning Centers. ICT and especially new forms of ICT have played a significant role in shifting the focus away from local community development toward individual lifelong learning. Critical success factors for using ICT in NFE include the need for coherent policy, access to technology infrastructure, investment in people and not just technology, effective planning and programme design, the development of relevant content, planning for sustainability, ensuring multi-stakeholder partnerships, and continuous monitoring and evaluation. To read the full essay please follow this link www.infodev.org/en/Article.574.html