Workshop on the Management of International Networks for Knowledge Sharing

A brief report on the workshop I just attended in Switzerland, St. Gallen

A brief report on the workshop I just attended in Switzerland (Workshop on the Management of International Networks for Knowledge Sharing, 25th – 28th April 2006, St. Gallen)

There

were about 40 participants, mostly “networkers”, people

focused on knowledge sharing etc. Quite a few of them work in

sanitation and water management and health issues. Besides, there is

an interesting group of (mainly Swiss) participants who work in such

fields as building suspension bridges in Nepal, construction of local

hydro power plants, disposal of e-waste etc (it is good to hear about

different non-ict development initiatives and fantasize about

possible overlaps with what we are doing…).

Several people

know APC or some members (there are some London-based participants

who know GreenNet, and Ndala Duma from South African Water

Information System is familiar with SangoNet). Not only NGO

initiatives were represented, though. Some participants came from

funder organizations and several development agencies, one from World

Bank, one from ASEAN etc…

Alison

Hewlitt and Jackie Nnam from Bellanet were at the workshop and gave a

presentation on Harambee Project in which APC Africa Women group is

involved.

Issues discussed which I found most interesting were:

  • diasporas

    playing major role in funding development projects in their home

    countries

  • preserving accumulated knowledge after project’s

    funding (unexpectedly) ends and most of the people who worked on it

    lose their jobs

The conclusions should be available on Skat’s

website shortly

Otherwise, a

lot of discussion topics (which were raised through open space methodology and discussed in working

groups where I was present) have been spinning around rather general

questions, such as “what is a network, what kinds of networks

are there, should it live forever” etc…

One project that might be particularly interesting for APC members is a

knowledge sharing project on public health issues. It is being

currently developed by one of the participants, Alena

Petrakovafrom WHO (Technical Officer of Knowledge Management).

Over the

years, WHO has accumulated a large amount of knowledge and information materials on public

health issues and they are looking for ways how to get it out to

health workers and make the best use of it possible. In collaboration

with the University of Iowa (College of Public Health) they started testing Elluminated

training/knowledge sharing platform for distant training. WHO is testing this on-line communication approach

on training public health professionals in number of countries, and they are looking for more local

partners who are skilled in using ICT’s and who work with local

communities, possible beneficiaries of mentioned database.

I

will be kept updated on the development of this project.

Ambitions of

the project team are obviously high, both in terms of volume and

quality of resources shared trough distant learning, as well as in

terms of numbers of target groups reached through the project.

Perhaps there might be some opportunities for APC members to become

involved in the project in future.

SKAT Foundation (workshop organizer)

Information on WHO’s initiative

Région: 
« Retourner