Sharing Knowledge for Community Development and Transformation: A Handbook

TL;DR: Oxfam Canada is a non-profit, international development organization that works with community groups to help people attain better health and nutrition, more secure incomes and a stronger say in their future as well as responding in emergency situations.

Abstract: Oxfam Canada is a non-profit, international development organization that works with community groups to help people attain better health and nutrition, more secure incomes and a stronger say in their future as well as responding in emergency situations. Oxfam Canada works in over 20 countries in Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. In Canada, Oxfam educates people on issues of global poverty and advocates for positive changes in policies that directly affect the worlds poor (www.oxfam.ca). Oxfam Canada is one of the 12 Oxfam organizations around the world that form Oxfam International. The Horn of Africa Capacity Building Programme (HOACBP) is a bilateral programme entirely funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and managed by Oxfam Canada and Oxfam Québec, from 1997 to 2002. HOACBP supports groups and organizations that are grounded at the local level, engaged in non-formal education, information and communications, gender equality and justice. It promotes the principles of equity and participatory development throughout the Horn of Africa and supports organizations that espouse and reinforce these principles. FOREWORD Sharing Knowledge is about freedom. It is concerned, more specifically, with the five freedoms identified by economist Amartya Sen in Development as Freedom, as key for human and social development: political freedoms; social opportunities such as education; transparency guarantees as a right of every citizen; protective security against risks, such as ill health; and economic facilities leading to greater autonomy. This handbook is for women and men making use of information and knowledge for the realization of their freedoms and those of their communities. Sharing Knowledge is essentially a process with deep roots in the experiences of rural people, striving to retain dignity, self-confidence and influence over their future. The concept draws from the work of the Cajamarca Rural Library Network in northern Peru and, in particular, from the production of a rural encyclopedia written by and for rural people of that area. The Cajamarca Network became a mentor for me and for Gwynneth Evans from the National Library of Canada. Its innovative work as a social movement inspired the Canadian NGO, CODE, in its support to post-literacy programs in countries, such as Mozambique, Tanzania and Ethiopia. In this work, our steps crossed with those of Dr. Kingo Mchombu, the author of Sharing Knowledge. Dr. Mchombu's research work on information and rural development in Africa echoed the concerns and the values of the Cajamarca Network. Oxfam …