Knowledge management at Mvula Trust

My name is Dick de Jong, currently in South Africa for three months of sabbatical leave from my communcation job at IRC. I am teaming up with The Mvula Trust, the national NGO in water and sanitation, and a partner of IRC.

I asked Jabu Masondo one of the two people working in Communication & Advocacy unit if we could ask some of their regional managers who were visiting the head quarter office in Johannesburg the question what knowledge management means to them. "This will not be possible", he answered, "they don't have the time, as they have to focus all of their efforts on securing funds for new projects. Also for some of them you would first have to explain what knowledge management means".

Philip Davids', institutional and social development specialist in the head office, first reaction to my question in a lunch break what KM means to him was: "Computers". When I prompted him he added: "Identifying, collecting and storing information and making it available in a very easy and accessible and usable way".

The time pressure all the Mvula staff are under is not allowing them to do enough information sharing and knowledge development, both Philip and Jabu agreed.

Jabu is the only Mvula staff who is subscribed to this e-conference, but the problem is that he and many other South Africans as of tonight go on 9 - 10 day holiday until after Easter.

Jabu is the communcation man in the Mvula Office who is doing the most in information sharing. He on behalf of Mvula keeps up-to-date by subscribing to a paid news clipping service in South Africa on the keywords, water, sanitation, local government, and communties. From spending 30 minutes a day on received clips he generates one or two Vericlip stories per week, which he shares with all the Mvula office and the Source Weekly editor.

Jabu's knowledge about knowledge management and other key sector topics was greatly enhanced during his 15-month of learing at IRC in the junior professional staff exchange programme between IRC and partners. As a result of this he is currently setting up an Intranet for the Mvula staff. He is also training other sector organisations in South Africa on the hows, whys and whats of developing a web site.

At Mvula I am sitting in the same office as Jabu, which provides us the face-to-face opportunity to occasionally share information and two-way learning.

Dick de Jong