Community Knowledge

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    Knowledge democracy: Opening our doors to all knowledge systems
    (UNESCO, 2020) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
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    Understanding design of organisation
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 2001-08-25) Tandon, Rajesh
    This text by Dr. Rajesh Tandon presents a comprehensive analysis of the structure and process of understanding organizations and NGOs and navigates strategies to their management. The text describes models as conceptual tools for analyzing organizational behaviour, emphasizing the organization as an open social system and provides a systems theory for it. It explains missions and purposes of an organisation and lists its required inputs and desired outputs. The text further identifies and describes five key components of organizational design, technology, tasks, human resources, formal organizational structure, and informal organization. It analyses the concept of congruence, arguing that organizational effectiveness depends on the degree to which these components fit together and presents the congruence hypothesis arguing that greater the fit between components, the more effective the organization will be in achieving its mission. The text identifies types of NGOs and addresses several critical issues for NGO management such as compatibility with organizing elements, size and informal structure, hierarchy, and organisational changes. It further discusses the differences arising from different ideologies and operational strategies and the need for NGOs to manage relationships with multiple constituencies. The text concludes that organizations are complex social systems requiring analysis at multiple levels and aspects and that a successful organisation requires effective division of work and integration of efforts.
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    Re-Visiting participation third course development professional from south asia countries
    (Participatory research in Asia (PRIA), 2000-09-07) Satyamurthi, V
    This paper compiled by V. Satyamurthi examines the concepts, methods, and limitations of monitoring and evaluation in development programmes. The paper traces the evolution of M&E from its origins in the 1950s UN system through the 1970s expansion of international development assistance. It critiques the conventional M&E system, arguing that it fails to capture the complex, qualitative dimensions of social change. The paper then assesses in detail, and distinguishes between monitoring as an internal management activity providing regular feedback on implementation progress, and evaluation as a broader assessment of programme appropriateness, results, and impact. Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation and its key elements are presented as an alternative based on the belief that those most closely involved can analyse their own problems. The paper then outlines six categories of PM&E indicators, from group operation and management, economic performance, technical operation, financial management, group institutionalisation and self-reliance, to other considerations. The paper concludes by distinguishing three kinds of evaluation using Karl Deutsch's feedback loop framework, arguing how only participatory evaluation provides the latter two forms of feedback essential for genuine development.
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    Mobilizing community and academic knowledge for transformative change: The story of the UNESCO Chair in community based research and social responsibility in higher education
    (The Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s IdeaLab, 2017) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
    What role can higher education play in advancing knowledge democracy and fulfilling its social responsibility? This paper co-authored by Dr. Budd L. Hall and Dr. Rajesh Tandon reflects the establishment, evolution, and contributions of the UNESCO chair in community-based research and social responsibility in higher education. Established in July 2012 as a unique co-chair partnership bridging the University of Victoria (Canada) and Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA, India). This paper outlines the effectiveness of a distinctive global North-South co-chair method in connecting academic institutions with grassroots practitioners to promote knowledge and democracy. The paper explores how universities should collaborate with communities in the co-creation of knowledge to promote social responsibility, inclusion, and sustainable development. Through its three core domains, knowledge mobilization, policy advocacy, and capacity building, the chair has generated substantial, systemic impact. Through global reports, policy dialogues, and training programs, the Chair has influenced higher education policy, fostered international networks, and contributed to embedding engagement and participatory research into the everyday functions of universities. This paper demonstrates how universities can contribute to social change by working closely with communities, promoting sustainable development, and strengthening their social responsibility.
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    Participatory training and self development
    (0000) Acharya, Binoy; Verma, Shalini
    How should training be undertaken to encourage critical thinking and instill confidence in people? In this article, Binoy Acharya and Shalini Verma discuss the growing emphasis on training within the development sector while questioning approaches that reduce training to the mere transfer of information or techniques. They argue that many people, especially the poor and marginalised, experience the systematic devaluation of their own knowledge and capacities which weakens self confidence and participation. For this reason, simply providing more skills cannot by itself lead to empowerment, though external knowledge may still be useful. The focus of training, they argue, must be to foster critical thinking so that people can analyse their own realities, articulate their experiences, and identify what they need to learn further. Participatory training is highlighted as a process that breaks the culture of silence, restores faith in people’s own knowledge, and builds confidence for collective action. Social development, the authors emphasise, begins with the development of the self.
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    Knowledge as a commodity and participatory research
    ( Prospects, UNESCO, 1979) Hall, Budd L
    What is knowledge? How is it formed? Who has the authority to “make” it? and who does it ultimately serve? These are the central questions Dr. Budd Hall raises in this article. He critiques the way traditional intellectuals such as scientists and scholars, often trained in elite universities and supported by international funding agencies, are institutionally positioned as the legitimate producers of knowledge. Embedded within particular class locations, this group often produces knowledge that serves its own class interests and maintains dominant social relations. In this process, organic intellectuals engaged in critical reflection and grassroots organising are sidelined as knowledge makers. Drawing on the works of Freire, Mao and others, Hall reflects on the role of intellectuals. He advances a systematic critique of survey research and outlines the guiding principles of participatory research. The article is a critical inquiry into the nature of knowledge within the new international order. It calls for moving beyond viewing knowledge as intellectual commodities such as papers and conferences and toward recognising and valuing local and indigenous knowledge systems, while developing more decentralised ways of legitimising people as producers of knowledge.
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    Higher education-community-industry engagement: Forging meaningful partnerships across ASEAN & Asia
    (2012) Tandon, Rajesh
    Dr. Rajesh Tandon delivered this keynote at AsiaEngage's 2012 regional conference on higher education, community and industry partnerships across ASEAN and Asia. He opens by describing how interconnected the world has become, pointing to Europe's stagnant economies, rising inequality, and ecological strain across Asia. From there, he turns to knowledge production, framing it as a space full of both promise and conflict. He says universities have long treated themselves as the only real producers of knowledge, pushing aside indigenous, intuitive and community-based ways of knowing. Partnerships with communities are not easy. They carry old histories of exclusion and mistrust and need what he calls bridging leadership to work. He points to Europe's science shop movement as one model and announces UNESCO's new chair on community-based research, co-led with Budd Hall. He closes with a story from his own dissertation fieldwork, where a village elder challenges his narrow idea of data.
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    Bridging knowledge cultures: A guide for community practitioners and community organizations
    (UNESCO Chair, 2024) Lepore, Walter; Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
    This guide by Walter Lepore, Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon is about helping community practitioners and organisations build stronger research partnerships with universities. It draws on the larger Bridging Knowledge Cultures project, which studied ten K4C hubs across Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Colombia and Canada. The book explores partnerships in areas such as fishing communities, maternal health care, waste management, and early childhood education. Community knowledge is rooted in lived experience and oral tradition, while academic knowledge is typically validated through peer review and disciplinary standards, a gap that often leaves community knowledge undervalued within formal academic settings. It closes with practical recommendations for practitioners facilitating collaboration between communities and universities, pointing to trust, mutual respect, and the recognition of practices like storytelling as legitimate forms of knowledge
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    Creating knowledge: A monopoly? Participatory research in development
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1982-06) Hall, Budd L; Gillete, Arthur; Tandon, Rajesh
    This book is about participatory research as a political process bound up with questions of power and knowledge production, rather than merely a set of methods. It opens with the Jamaican Drama for Progress literacy project, where a shift from delivering pre-written messages to villagers toward enabling them to write and perform their own material captures the move from research done on people to research done with them. Drawing on the Latin American tradition of investigación acción and Paulo Freire's thematic investigation, the collection questions who is authorised to produce knowledge about poverty and underdevelopment. Five theoretical essays address participation, power and alternative methods, followed by seven case studies from Indonesia, Senegal, Tanzania, England, Chile, Canada and India, and a concluding section of critical reactions. Rather than success stories, what emerges are unresolved questions about initiating participatory work, sustaining ties with political organisations, and balancing theory with praxis in research committed to social transformation.
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    Knowledge and social change: An inquiry into participatory research in India
    (Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1985-10) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)
    This report is about an inquiry into participatory research, evaluation, and training efforts across India, carried out by the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) with seven collaborating organizations from different parts of the country. It grew out of a shared unease among researchers and trainers about the distance conventional social science placed between the expert and the people that research was meant to serve. The study set out to document ongoing experiments in the field and to draw out what these scattered efforts had in common. The cases move from training sessions with rural and urban women to inquiries carried out jointly by professionals, activists, and forest dwellers, each showing people affected by a problem taking part in investigating it themselves. The report works through how such processes build confidence and collective awareness among participants and how the person facilitating a group must stay close enough to its concerns to be useful while keeping enough distance to see clearly. The seven cases differ widely in setting and scale, yet common threads run through them around mobilization, skill-building, and the sharing of authority over knowledge, questions that the study returns to through each case.