Surfacing the Strengths of Local Content through Participatory Communication
Author: Charles Dhewa – Managing Consultant, Knowledge Transfer Africa (KTA), Zimbabwe
Session: 3: Media and Other ARD Players : Tuesday 13 October 2009:
Community Knowledge Centres
• Participatory Communication with rural people set up at schools with emphasis on listening.
• Methods – Open Space, Outcome Mapping, Asset Based Community Development.
• Community Documentation – indigenous knowledge and local information (documents by researchers).
• Conservation Agriculture, cotton production and Climate Change dialogue at Kamwa Primary School and Mbovhana Sec School.
• Local Champions identified.
PRINCIPLES AND APPROACHES
Community Knowledge Centres as new forms of solidarity and networking
• Resonates with People – Centred Development: access to information by all community members for empowerment.
• High status to indigenous and locally created knowledge and traditional channels of communication.
• Stimulating communities’ creative urge and impulse.
Learning how to learn toward building relationships and trust
• People’s own capacity to learn from experience is the foundation of their development.
• Learning how to learn effectively triggers pride in own intelligence and knowledge.
• Connecting with farmers through Action Learning and Horizontal Learning (valuing the knowledge of doers and not only thinkers).
CKCs as Learning Organisations
• Farmers and rural communities joining in the search for answers to poverty and exclusion.
• Integration of various learning methods instead of vertical learning.
• Pooling experiences through Community Knowledge Centres enabling them make sense of the world.
Asking good questions and listening
• Through asking good questions and listening farmers find their voice = power.
• How can we convince cotton companies to put more money in constructing small dams and bridges?
• What could be the environmental effect of cotton chemicals?
• Editors of National Newspapers and ZBC brought in to listen in on discussions.
• Deeper listening = thinking, feeling and willing.
• Helping rural people and farmers to express their feelings is providing a deeper path for social change.
Helping farmers and rural communities to document their own processes
• Collaborating with the Africa Community Publishing and Development Trust (ACPD) and CTDT.
• Communities documenting their processes, appreciate what is working and future possibilities.
Outcomes
Bringing critical analyses to the surface
• Farmers have become critical users of information and knowledge.
• Integrate information and knowledge into their various development activities.
Indigenous Knowledge
• Gathering, evaluating and preserving indigenous knowledge.
• Collections of traditional objects and household items consisting of hand-made objects.
• Community elders/ traditional experts passing on skills to youths. , depicting the history, culture and indigenous
Job Mushonga (82) – A fountain of Knowledge and great storyteller in Gokwe North
Locally created Information
• Reports from extension and veterinary officers and local clinics.
• Information about the people, culture, livestock, natural resources, traditional medicine and practitioners etc.
Investigating information seeking patterns in rural communities
• Nurturing community journalism.
• Demystifying information and knowledge.
‘’We make the path by walking it.’’ – African Proverb
• CKCs are a home for change where we are supporting, grounding and sustaining knowledge sharing.
• To make changes, you have to be part of the change too.
• If not grounded, you can write books about change, but forget about implementing.
Farmers and journalists learn from a local farmer in Gokwe North.
Farmers share and demonstrate their knowledge at a Community Demo site.
Discussing operations of a Community Knowledge Centre – Mberengwa district, Zimbabwe
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