The planning session of the PICTA
Knowledge Sharing Communities kick-started today (24 May 2004)
Representatives from ECA, Bellanet and APC are participating in a two-day planning session
from 24 to 25 May 2004 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to explore partnership opportunities on
building Knowledge Sharing Communities (KSC). The main goal of this event is to create the
initial conditions for the formation of a core group of existing practitioners (a
Consortium) and develop strategies aimed at mainstreaming knowlege sharing (KS) activities
within development institutions as a whole. Today's session took off with information
exchange of the participating institutions as to their respective activities, followed by
a debate on the challenges in Africa. Participants then went through developing a vision
for the KS process based on questions such as: what changes can KS help bring about; what
are the dreams of participants, and if the consortium is successful, what would look
different in their approach? Activities for the second day will focus on formulating
strategies to accompany the vision backed by a plan of action that will be aimed at a
wider group of actors and presented to relevant funding agencies for support.
What do participants think of the forum so far?
"It didnt seem cleare to me at the beginning that we were going in the same
direction.. but the agreement on the importance of "process" is very important,
both for the donor community and recipients..
Makane Faye, ITCA, ECA
As a notion, Knowledge-Sharing tends to be ephimeral and it was important that we all
became comfortable with the idea, so that we can concretise activities better. Meeting as
a small group certainly helps to work through the process.."
Aida Opoku- Mensah, ECA
Methodologies, such as outcome mapping can be scary to work with, but we've covered a
lot of ground, and im looking forward to tomorrow.."
Allison Hewlitt, IDRC
For further information, please contact Aida Opoku-Mensah (aopoku-mensah@uneca.org) or Riff Fullan (rfullan@bellanet.org)
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