The words knowledge, learning and networking are used on nearly every page in the ICCO Alliance new business plan. The plan envisages a renewed and transformed ICCO in which the organization and other partners become a global alliance with decentralized operations across the world. It is expected that many activities will be designed and managed through regional ‘councils’ in developing regions and that some activities now managed in the Netherlands will be based in the South. This change poses a series of significant information, knowledge-sharing and communication challenges to the alliance, particularly to enhance internal and ‘network’ capacities in these areas.
In February 2007, ICCO contracted Euforic to help it tackle two main challenges:
1. To enhance the strategic information, knowledge and communication capacities of ICCO alliance partners in the South – so they can operate more effectively in a networked environment, contribute on an equal basis to ICCO alliance supported programs and projects, and learn from and share their experiences more effectively.
2. To support the same capabilities of ICCO alliance staff and programs in the Netherlands – so they can contribute to the learning and capacity building elements of the new business plan and can interact effectively with external partners and allies.
The ‘internal’ component of this four-year project started in early 2007 and will run through to mid 2008. The main ‘south’ component will be developed with a group of partner organizations and allies that will share knowledge and learning through thematic information exchange networks; a smaller group of ‘enabling’ partners in the South will provide specialist information, knowledge and communication support to the ICCO alliance partners as they move to a more networked environment.
By mid 2007, the project is taking shape: A learning platform has been established, built on open and low costs web applications. Known as ‘ComPart’, it helps Alliance staff document, publish, and share information. The ‘system’ brings together wiki’s, blogs, social bookmarks, RSS feeds, discussion groups, and more. Later this year, learning facilitators and other interested staff will get trained in this evolving social web…
See news from the ICCO alliance
See the ComPart wiki
