Capitalising on Local Knowledge - Community knowledge exchange

About this book

Important concepts in development

About this book

This Toolkit is designed to provide practical guidance in designing and implementing community-to-community exchange visits. It is intended for practitioners and service providers who wish to implement knowledge exchange processes, and will also be of interest to students and development professionals who would like to better understand how the methodology is implemented.

This toolkit does not attempt to give all the answers to the novice development practitioner. Rather, it is a straightforward description of the overall methodology, and a collection of experiences and hints from recent exchange processes. We hope that it will serve as an inspiration to the practitioner to develop and implement an innovative process that is appropriate in the local context.

The shaded boxes in the process chapter will show ­­­­how the exchange visits were done in the Suid Bokkeveld Project (South Africa).

Facilitated exchanges between communities are dynamic processes. Design of exchanges must be adapted to suit local conditions and should facilitate the achievement of learning objectives. This handbook is not prescriptive: the authors hope that it will serve as a living tool, and inspire the practitioner to innovate and to explore new areas of knowledge and practice.

The Toolkit accompanies Toolkit I: “Capitalising on local knowledge: Community knowledge exchange – a methodological overview”. Toolkit I focuses on the methodological framework, the context of knowledge exchange visits and criteria for assessing community knowledge exchange programmes or projects.

Important concepts in development

Some important concepts in development will be explained below so as to create a shared understanding of terms and concepts used in this toolkit. All of these concepts are important for the success of a community knowledge exchange and they should be applied consistently throughout the process. Toolkit I has more conceptual background on offer.

Knowledge
Knowledge is the basis for all conscious action. We can only do something conscious when we know what results it is likely to have. Knowledge is quite different from information or data. We can use sound information and reliable data to increase our knowledge, but misinformation and incorrect data might have the opposite effect.

We can know things in different ways: we often think of knowing as being merely cognitive and rational. However, we can also know things in terms of feeling and doing. These forms of knowing usually play an insignificant role in classroom training situations. In rural communities feeling and doing are important ways of knowing. Our development practice should not ignore them.

Learning
The process by which our knowledge is expanded is learning. Active learning is crucial in developing survival strategies in a rapidly changing physical and economic environment.

The learning process can be simply conceptualised as cyclical process that is followed by the learner. We follow this sort of cycle thousands of time a day in the small and large actions we take. The same conceptualisation can be used for the way in which groups can go about enhancing their knowledge so as to make more effective plans and decisions.

If the crucial steps of reflection and learning are missing from collective decision making, groups or organisations will make poor decisions that are not informed by the new insights that they could get by observing and reflecting on new information, or on their own recent actions.

Knowledge exchanges are an invaluable way of exposing people to opportunities to learn about new or alternative ways of doing things that matter to them, such as marketing their produce, treating diseases or managing natural resources. However, it is important to design and facilitate the exchange visits in such a way that the participants, individually and collectively, are able to reflect on the new information and learn what it might mean to them. Participatory evaluation is one very good way to encourage group reflection and learning.

Ownership
We use the term ownership to describe the perception that an initiative, its benefits and outcomes “belong” to the individual, group or community. People often regard development projects as “belonging “ to the NGO or government agency that is the prime implementer. They are willing to share the benefits that are on offer, but not to share the costs and problems that accompany them.

An approach that seeks to address the expressed needs of the community can give rise to the perception that it is the responsibility of the service provider to meet these needs. In many cases the people who have the capacity or potential to meet the needs best are the community members themselves. If the service provider takes the primary responsibility for meeting the needs, the participation and ownership of the community members will be diminished. It is thus vital to ensure that the process is one in which community members act from a sense of responsibility.

Failure of development initiatives often manifests itself when the development agent withdraws, and it becomes apparent that there is not enough local ownership to sustain the initiatives that it has facilitated. However, if an initiative starts out right, with full participation and ownership of the concept from the start, the chances of it succeeding are far better. Knowledge exchange processes can do much to engender participation, but it is important to realise that, from the start, they should be designed to maximise participation.

Participation
Participation is the key to creating local ownership for initiatives, and is important in any initiative that is shared within a community of practice. People who feel excluded from participating in shaping new initiatives will either ignore them or actively undermine them. Those who participate actively will contribute their knowledge and experience, as well as their enthusiasm, commitment and vision. These are the “fuel in the tank” of any initiative.

Whether an outside agency demands participation of communities or not, a well-designed development intervention will ensure that it is maximised. If people have contributed to shaping a process, and have actively learned and been excited by what takes place, they will feel motivated. They will feel that the initiative is theirs, and not something being done for, or to them. This sense of ownership of the ideas and plans will manifest itself in the ways in which community-based initiatives are taken forward.

Indigenous knowledge and potential
Small-scale farmers, pastoralists and hunter-gatherers make their management decisions in the context of a local knowledge system. How can we, as development practitioners, enable people to enhance and broaden their local knowledge systems, and to make better management decisions? Knowledge exists within our minds, and is based upon the innumerable learning experiences that we undergo in the course of our lives. Some of these learning experiences are consciously structured by traditional or formal educational processes, but most occur within the daily interaction of people and their environment. Indigenous knowledge is people’s knowledge, and is learned within our communities. It forms of a complex web of knowing and perceiving that shapes our response to the world and the opportunities that it offers. If development agents lack understanding and sympathy with indigenous knowledge, it will not be possible for them to help unlock the potential that lies within local people and their environments without damaging the fabric of the society and undermining the integrity of the people.

Successful community knowledge exchange processes bring together peers who can identify with one another in a way that enables them to learn relatively easily from each other. In the next section we will explore how adult learning theory can be applied to enhance knowledge exchanges.

If you would like more insight into indigenous knowledge, refer to Alan R. Emery’s excellent publication “Guidelines: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge in Project Planning and Implementation”. Produced in partnership by the World Bank, CIDA, ILO and KIVU Inc., the IK Guidelines are available on the web at: http://www.worldbank.org/afr/ik/guidelines/index.htm

The learning spiral is the basis for designing knowledge exchanges