Originally published on cgiar.org by:International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) on Jun 9, 2008

CIAT has been leading the Knowledge Sharing (KS) Project of the CGIAR on behalf of the ICT-KM Program since 2004. With a key objective to encourage open and inclusive sharing of knowledge, expertise, and experiences among CGIAR staff and research partners, the Program’s knowledge sharing work is aimed at supporting learning and change to improve the effectiveness and impact of CGIAR work.

The first phase of this project (2004-2005) supported successfully four pilot initiatives, which incorporated KS principles and approaches into high-profile Center events and served as entry points for promoting change in the Centers' institutional culture. In the current second phase, the project focuses on scaling up project activities, with the aim of mainstreaming knowledge sharing principles and tools.

Therefore, and among other interventions, the project developed a KS Workshop. A total of 40 people from CGIAR Centers, FAO, and Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) have joined a 4 week on-line event in April and 20 participants gathered at International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) campus in Addis Ababa in May for this unique opportunity to explore and experiment with knowledge-sharing principles and methods in an innovative 3-phase workshop. The workshop methodology has been based on action learning principles and offers a systemic approach to KS, facilitated by the consultants Nancy White and Lucie Lamoureux, Petr Kosina from International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and Project leader Simone Staiger-Rivas.

The KS Toolkit, developed as a wiki, was the center piece of the workshop around which most activities and discussions took place. Currently there are 58 different tools and methods that are outlined on the wiki covering face-to-face methodologies as well as virtual collaborative tools. Watching the KS Toolkit user statistics, it seems to become a very important resource for KS practitioners worldwide! It has only been unofficially launched 2 months ago and counts already almost 20,000 views in that period!

Andrea Pape-Christiansen from International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) was one of our participants and stated: “It's what we the participants make of it—contacts and toolkit and links etc are all there to pick up and use—leaves one with a good feeling like the end of the course is just the beginning.”

See the workshop blog for more information.

Join the KS Toolkit user community.

Contact: Simone Staiger (s.staiger@cgiar.org), Leader, Knowledge Sharing Project, CIAT.
Phone: +57 (2) 4450000 (ext. 3222), Cali, Colombia.