GKP and Sustainable Pangea February 13, 2012
Felipe - when I read the post below, by Ulrich Burkhard, I was reminded of you, and your work observing small successful projects in South America, and your concern about making your work more visible and useful to people
- Felipe's work is Sustainable Pangea http://en.pangeasostenible.org/
The post below is taken from this thread - http://gkpfoundation.org/group/gkpf-open-forum/forum/topics/what-can-gkpf-do-in-order-to-become-a-larger-and-stronger-network? I have copied the post in full below because it is a long thread so you might have difficulty finding it.
I've also copied another post with the idea of National Chapters.
Perhaps if you are not already a member of it would be useful for you to join GKP (Global Knowledge Partnership) Foundation ( GKP Mission Statement - As an evolving network of public, civil society, and commercial organizations, GKP provides members, access to global knowledge and innovation; links with organisations within and across regions; supports capacity development and provides opportunities for resource mobilisation to advance development.)
Looking forward to meeting up with you again on Thursday at the meetup - http://www.meetup.com/Dadamac/events/44566972/ - to hear more about your work.
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Hi Alain,
thank you for your reply. It encourages me!
Right now, I like to be in places, where mind changes visibly occure. Therefore I like to be here with gkpf in the "international field" and I like to be on the local level with the villagers of Gertenbach, as they are wonderful open minded to listen and to hear what is going on elsewhere and what new things we could import from outside to bring about changes in their village.
I like your phrase "innovation is disconnected from reality"! It is a useful visualization to me.
I like stories, so I have an other story that gives me an answer toward what is "innovation" about.
35 years back, I was student of international agriculture and I traveled with an old German Mercedes car from Germany to Nepal (we only could dream of that in our days). In Nepal I came across medicinal plants and its traditional importance of the very rural people (you see that was always my subject) living along the habitat boader in the Himalayas to survive. People were collecting those plants from the wild, transporting them on their backs and selling them down in Terai. The many international aid agencies over there had never investigated into that subject "it is not of major importance" I was told at that time.So without funding, I did research work on my own and wrote my "diploma theses" on that subject.
I want to give with that example for what is innovation about:
Than it is to me often the way we look at something rather than a brand new technology.
35 years later it is still innovative to look on medicinal plants in Nepal's remotest areas.
(It could be funny to digitalize my work to see what has changed within that decades)And I want to say with that example, that we tend to look for "what is of major importance".
That could not always be the only right way.I dare say, when we turn toward "small clever consepts" with hight impuls potential, we are on the right way!
I invest my time writing here because I belive that gkpf is a wonderful place to stimulate projects with "hight impulse potentials". These projects need less financial inputs that many big projects had in the past, but they induces tremendous impulses.
In 2010/2011 the German Ministry of Transport .... has tested such an approach in four counties. Nobody had ever belived of such a tremendous success in our county of "Werra-Meißner". A really small sum of money down to the village level has induced many many new projects I myself had never dreamed of.
I was invited to turn a film around on of these many project, the new "Dorfläden" village grocery shops in former devasted premises. See here ...
only in German language!
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Dear Ulrich, dear Klaus:
Thanks for these contributions... Yes, I see that GKPF can diffuse these methodologies to other global village communities and then share/exchange between communities, as opposed to between villages (not excluded of course and great if it happens). But the Community to Community means a certain regional capacity exists. I can think of a number of regions where GKPF is involved... but let them come forward... if not fast enough, we can do a little prompting. I like the model of local fundraising for these Village Innovation Talks... Interesting though and not surprising of course that the movement in Germay needed some central public funding to kick start... Will other governments be that open to decentralization processes and signing cheques to make it happen? I think so...this is happening in South America right now (Ecuador for instance!).
This raises the idea of GKP national chapters... I think they would be useful because they would be culturally synched and facilitate the regional processes of knowledge generation but tuned into global networks like GKP to facilitate scaling-up, dissemination and replication/adaptation....
Probably dreaming!!!!
Best, Alain