Workshop on the Management of International Networks for Knowledge Sharing

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 shortlyOtherwise, 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.