Flower to flower: grassroots networking

Professor Anil K. Gupta created the Honey Bee Network, based in India, to confront the traditional view of development as a means to “provide what poor people lack.” ^[i] This view has been so deeply embedded in the literature that development strategies have customarily failed to recognise and make use of a resource that rural communities have in abundance: the skills and ideas that people have developed to address everyday challenges in their communities.

CC - Image courtesy of Phylomon from Flickr

Giving a voice to slum dwellers: Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI)

Whilst examining the concept of ‘horizontal learning’ or sideways learning, we came across a really interesting organisation called Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI).

CC - Image courtesy of Tobias Leeger from Flickr

Learning Sideways

Horizontal learning – what we are calling ‘sideways learning’ – is one of the methods we’ve uncovered on our global search to find new ways of doing things, which is growing in popularity amongst communities and leaders in developing contexts. A form of peer-to-peer learning, horizontal learning practices are ‘people-to-people’ exchanges of knowledge between equals, peers who are interested in the same field and who both have experience and varying expertise in the area.

CC - Image courtesy of Ian Britton from Flickr