Are we shooting ourselves in the foot?

Another interesting presentation at Nijmegen – again the CIDIN celebrations on 19 September – was by Roger Ridell, who was director of Christain Aid until very recently and author of the book Does foreign aid really work? (You can read a critical review of this book by Simon Maxwell here). I’m going to try to paraphrase Roger [...]

The knowledge bank

At Nijmegen last Friday, where CIDIN was holding its 25th anniversary conference and celebrations, I briefly talked to Ben Fine – a member of staff at SOAS where I studied many years ago. Ben is the author – with a large amount of assistance from Philip Larkin – of a really hilarious poem on social [...]

Cartoons and complex messages

At Context this week, a terrific cartoon newsletter has been circulating among my colleagues. It represents a 12-page distillation of CDRA’s self-evaluation over 5 years. I really think this is great – and is such a brilliant way of communicating complex messages. It reminds me a bit of Dr Kumar, the manager hero, in the FAO’s IMARK module on [...]

Welcome to two new bloggers

This message is to welcome two new bloggers on The Giraffe. They are Ivan Kulis of the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) who is interested in blogging with us, and Serafin Talisayon of the Centre for Conscious Living Foundation Inc who is being commissioned to produce one of the two IKM Emergent stuides on monitoring [...]

What happens if you don’t share knowledge…

Well, people interpret or invent for themselves how things work. Reinventing the wheel, we sometimes call this. But when applied to justice, for instance, this can lead to interesting results… Have a look at this news item from the very serious BBC.
DR Congo frees goats from prison
Deputy Justice Minister Claude Nyamugabo said he found the [...]

Proving by Improving

I interviewed Peter Das, working for Context, about measurement of the impact of knowledge management interventions in the development sector. Typical knowledge management interventions in our sector may include supporting networks or communities of practice, organisational learning trajectories, team learning, After Action Reviews and many other interventions or mix of interventions.
Of course, we also started talking about monitoring [...]