IRC Ghana shared their perspective on Information and Knowledge Management (KM) with the General Assembly of the West Africa Regional Journalist Network in Accra on Thursday April 28, 2011.
The Communications Lead of IRC Ghana Programme, Lamisi Dabire outlined the goal of the Ghana programme, which is to stimulate and contribute to the creation of a ‘learning sector’ that effectively serves the poor. She stated that this was done through supporting dialogue, communication and knowledge management; research and technology development; stimulating sector change and reform; and piloting and testing innovative approaches.
Ms Dabire enumerated the IRC program delivery channels and projects to include, the WASHCost project hosted by KNUST; Sustainable Services at Scale project hosted by CWSA; Resource Centre Network (RCN) hosted by TREND; Tripartite Partnership Project (TPP) led by TREND; the SWITCH and WASHTECH projects.
On knowledge sharing platforms, she stated that the RCN, which is a dynamic knowledge-driven network of organizations providing improved pro-poor WASH services, was the lead sector knowledge driver, facilitating learning processes and advocating for knowledge sharing within all sector organizations. According to Ms Dabire, this was done through a range of activities including, a well established sector digital library and website, Ghana WASH Newsletter, the WASH Reflections, the sector calendar of events and the learning alliance platforms.
Ms Debire then touched on the IRC West Africa Regional KM projects, which comprise of the Burkina Faso Resource Centre Network hosted by CREPA Burkina Faso, Benin National Resource Centre Network hosted at CREPA Benin and the West Africa (WA) WASH programme in Burkina-Faso, Niger, Mali and Ghana. According her, the WA WASH entails a family of WASH blogs developed using wordpress and supporting news feeds, document sharing, blogging, calendaring and mailing functions.
On areas of possible collaboration, Ms Dabire proposed the WA-WASH; the upcoming WASH governance series; the WASH media platform; media outreach or learning journey; product development and sharing across the sub region; and more involvement of the journalists in the national, regional and district learning alliances.
Responding to some of the questions on collaboration, the National Coordinator of RCN Ghana, Abu Wumbei explained the concept and practice of the learning alliances, the wash governance series among others, stating that issues of collaboration could be explored further. The WSSCC representative, Tatiana pointed out that collaboration on the issues raised could be discussed further with the representatives of the network and the Water Aid link person.
The General Assembly of the West Africa Regional Journalist Network took place at the M-Plaza Hotel in Accra from April 27 to 29th April, 2011. The General Assembly was supported by the Water and Sanitation Collaboration Council (WSSCC) and hosted by Water Aid Ghana. Crepa Burkina was the other partner to share with the regional network. As part of their deliberations of the day, Accra, Ghana was unanimously selected as the head quarters of the regional journalist network. -Abu Wumbei, RCN Ghana