This in turn will equip citizens with the necessary tools, skills and understanding to fully participate in their societies. To encourage the growth of learning cities and lifelong learning, UNESCO has established the Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC) encompassing one thousand cities and communities around the world (Box 1). For example, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can provide high quality education courses to wide audiences for free (although some suffer from high drop-out rates and low completion rates).