Knowledge Management' Partnership between WARF and Rural Communities in West Africa: Lessons Learned - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Knowledge Management' Partnership between WARF and Rural Communities in West Africa: Lessons Learned

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Title: Knowledge Management' Partnership between WARF and Rural Communities in West Africa: Lessons Learned


1
Knowledge Management. Partnership between WARF
and Rural Communities in West Africa Lessons
Learned
  • Lessons Learned
  • By Ndèye Coumba FALL,
  • Program Director, WARF

2
MISSION
  • The West Africa Rural Foundation (WARF) is an
    international non-profit institution, with a
    professional West African staff and Board of
    Governors. Its mission is to help rural
    communities find and follow the path to
    self-reliance. This transformation is based on
    two cornerstones
  • A better appreciation by the community value of
    their local resources human and natural and,
  • Enhancement of community capacity to act
    effectively and realize that value.

3
Countries of operation
  • WARF works in Senegal, Mali, Gambia, Bissau
    Guinea, and Guinea.
  • These five countries are linked through popular
    trade, history, culture, administrative
    structures, ethnicity, languages, agricultural
    systems, and the natural movements of their
    populations.

4
WARFS PROFILE AND DEVELOPMENT PATTERN
  • Institutional performances
  • Country agreement with Government of Senegal and
    Mali
  • Board and staff development
  • Diversification of the funding base

5
Highlights of the presentation
  • This insight on knowledge management gives us
    the opportunity to revisit the way the knowledge
    and know-how WARF is trying to develop with its
    partners including rural communities in West
    Africa.
  • Needs for and goals of the support as a mechanism
    for community access to new knowledge for the
    sake of poverty alleviation
  •  Learning methods and instruments
  •  Major lessons learned and challenges.

6
LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS NEEDS FOR SUPPORT
  • Support for institutional development (training,
    methodological, technical, organizational
    support, functioning, and logistics)
  • Financial support to solve problems
  • Strategic relationship building with the various
    development stakeholders
  • Overall understanding of the macro dynamics in
    order to situate micro actions consistently with
    more general policies and issues.

7
Objective of the support help Grassroot
Organizations (G.O.) develop their capacities so
as to
  • play a more important role in local development,
  • develop more leadership in designing,
    negotiating, implementing, and evaluating the
    programs selected in collaboration with their
    partners.

8
This greater role implies social transformations
  • decision-making power sharing between the various
    stakeholders engaged in local development process
  • recognition by governments and international
    intervention institutions of their initiative
    responsibility
  • a power control of local communities and
    institutions
  • democratization of decision-making processes
    within the communities
  • recognition of the voice of the marginalized
    (women, youths, former slaves) .

9
LEARNING METHODS AND INSTRUMENTS the Direct
Support
  • Participatory Appraisal for peer capacity
    building.
  • Participatory Village Appraisal
  • Participatory Institutional Analysis
  • Mechanism of partnership management development
  • Local organization conceptualization,
    formulation, and planning.
  • Dialogue and Negotiation Frameworks
  • Trainings.
  • Monitoring and reflection workshops.
  • Farmer workshops of technology evaluation

10
LEARNING METHODS AND INSTRUMENTS
  • Contracting external expertise
  • Identification surveys.
  • External evaluation.
  • Relationship building through a virtual network
  • Experience circulation and sharing
  • Information and communication with the new
    technologies.
  • Financial support grants
  • providing local organizations with financial
    resources that help exert their capacity to
    choose and their orientation on services they
    want to offer

11
LESSONS LEARNED AND CHALLENGES
  • strengthening local organization cannot be
    regarded as an accelerated process, but should be
    undertaken in a sustainable way
  • be iterative and progressive
  • given the diversity of organizations, interests
    are often conflicting within the same community,
    in terms of institutional realities, earmarked
    support
  • flexibility in knowledge and know-how management
    mechanisms.

12
LESSONS LEARNED AND CHALLENGES
  • The support process could generate an attitude of
    fear towards WARF methods regarded as very
    critical by some communities accustomed to
    classical practices of technology transfer
  • local organizations whatever their weaknesses,
    claim an identity which, even if we think it is
    not consistent with their needs, requires a
    strategy of progressive support to prevent
    conflicts within and between communities and WARF

13
LESSONS LEARNED AND CHALLENGES
  • The quality of knowledge management processes can
    be measured through the capacity to settle
    conflict, be it cultural, institutional, or
    technical
  • Dynamic of support, to be relevant in the current
    environment, should have a function of interface
    management in knowledge management processes and
    find out solution to the poverty communities are
    facing

14
LESSONS LEARNED AND CHALLENGES
  • Local culture may sometime impede learning for
    development when knowledge transmission is
    earmarked for so-called superior ethnic groups,
    and who are not involved in the production
    process
  • Satisfaction of grievances without any relation
    to the needs for community self-promotion,
    complicate the process and the learning goals

15
LESSONS LEARNED AND CHALLENGES
  • Learning and knowledge management mechanisms
    should be consistent with traditional community
    based systems
  • Be careful with NICT

16
Conclusion knowledge management should be
considered in several ways
  • In terms of information, to provide involved
    stakeholders with new effective knowledge.
  • In terms of training which helps stakeholders to
    go beyond their individual limits.
  • In terms of communication, with appropriate tools
    and attitudes culturally accepted and encourage
    profitable exchange.
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