Strengthening knowledge management cooperation agreement between IRC and FHIS

IRC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the end of August 2010 with the Honduran Social Investment Fund FHIS (Fondo Hondureño de Inversión Social) that includes a joint workplan until August 2011. The objective is to strengthen knowledge management within FHIS, and on the other hand to express a continued commitment of FHIS to its involvement in the CHRECIAS resource centre, which is part of RAS-HON (Red de Agua y Saneamiento Honduras), the Honduran water and sanitation network. IRC and FHIS have developed a joint work plan outlining the activities up till August 2011 to work towards these objectives.

Signing of the MoU, Picture: FHIS/ Luis Cruz, 2010

Resource centre strengthening

Since its inception, FHIS has been making its staff part time available for the establishment and development of the CHRECIAS resource centre. CHRECIAS is seeking higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness in project implementation, applying lessons learned from previous projects, avoiding duplication of efforts, replicating best practices, and implementation of new concepts and knowledge.

As part of the activities for CHRECIAS, FHIS worked on:

• the conceptualization of the resource centre itself, and the development of its main strategies;
• the systematization of experiences in transparency, culminating in a module on it, which is now applied in projects of FHIS;
• the issue of multiple use of water (MUS). FHIS has integrated MUS in its PIR project, a pilot project which seeks to include the issue of productive use in the project cycle;
• facilitating a focus group on sustainability, examining the achievements and challenges in improving the sustainability of water projects..

Make better use of institutional knowledge

The participation of FHIS in these activities also led to the idea of applying knowledge management to the internal operations of the institution. As one of the key sector players, FHIS has extensive knowledge on the subject of WASH, and they feel they should make the best use of it.

Since some years now, IRC has been working in Honduras, being the country of concentration within IRC’s activities in Latin America. Since, 2007, IRC already has an agreement with RAS-HON working jointly on sector learning and knowledge management issues. Under this agreement, IRC professionals have been providing methodological and conceptual inputs.

The MoU with FHIS, being one of the key members of RAS-HON, provides the possibility to expand the work done with RAS-HON.