Whats constitutes Knowledge to US is not the same to THEM !!!

Organisation: Sulabh International Academy of Environmental Sanitation, INDIA

Hello all,

Welcome to this 4th round of the E-discussion on Knowledge Management for WATSAN on the proposed topic of ‘Spreading the word in the WATSAN sector’. I am Vikram Rajola, Deputy Director, Sulabh International Academy of Environmental Sanitation, New Delhi, INDIA.

I would like to point out the following with reference to the topic:

1. Most important for the end user (beneficiary or target group or the person/ community for whom we, the sector professionals are actually collection, collating, managing and disseminating information) is the actual benefit he/ she gets in the end. For example we spread word about the innumerable successful examples of micro-finance for watsan and how it is well managed by communities with little or no help from outsiders, the world over. But a thesis/ report detailing this is not of much use to a person, say in a village of Rajasthan in India, who lacks access to both water & sanitation, probably has enough money to partially share costs but no knowledge of how to do it. What is successful in a community experiment in kerala, may fail in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar.
The message I wish to convey here is that what we think is useful KNOWLEDGE, is probably neither KNOWLEDGE nor USEFUL to those who we think it would benefit. In this regard probably the best way is to involve the community - if not directly as in this E-discussion but indirectly through representatives, where their view is verbatim shared with us, so we get a perspective of what WATSAN means to different people in different parts of the world.

2. The fact that there is very little involvement of college and school students inspite of numerous initiatives by UNICEF and several NGO's is also a hinderance in spreading the word.
Students (school and college) are the best way to spread awareness about the importance of the sector and to seek solutions to the existing local problems through the NET. Even in developing countries, this age-group is the most active user of the Internet and as such can be targeted to spread the word (Knowledge gained) in the WATSAN sector.