New Knowledge Programme website online!
In recent years the role of knowledge in development has received renewed attention. The sector needs fresh ideas, new knowledge, and more specifically, to apply that knowledge to tackle particular issues. Therefore Hivos, in cooperation with several academic partners in the Netherlands, India and Indonesia, decided to set-up a Knowledge Programme on issues imperative to the work of civil society organisations and the development sector at large.
'In recent years the role of knowledge in development has received renewed attention,' general director Manuela Monteiro explains. 'People and organisations are trumpeting their knowledge ambitions, some are already talking about a hype. But has development cooperation become that knowledge intensive? I would answer yes and no. Yes, because we have seen a professionalization of international cooperation in which knowledge plays an important role.'
'No, because we still fall short addressing many complex challenges we're faced with. This partly has to do with the enormous complexity of international cooperation, but is partly due to a lack of substantial investments from the sector in knowledge development. The sector needs fresh ideas, new knowledge, and more specifically, to apply that knowledge to tackle particular issues.'
'To this end,' Monteiro continues, 'Hivos decided to set-up a Knowledge Programme on issues imperative to the work of civil society organisations and the development sector at large. Together with our current academic partners - Institute for Social Studies (the Netherlands), University for Humanistics (the Netherlands), the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (India), the Centre for Religious and Cultural Studies (Indonesia) and the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) - we aim to address questions such as how to understand and innovate support for civil society building, how to promote pluralism in times of growing intolerance, how to adapt to rapid changes such as the globalisation of markets?'
'We aim to answer these questions by integrating various forms of knowledge so that new insights can be created and strategies formulated that contribute to the development of new policies and practices for the development sector.'
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