Amkeni Wakenya

Knowledge Management

Amkeni Wakenya seeks to promote learning and knowledge management so as to entrench democratic governance in Kenya. This is addition to the other key functions of funding CSOs and building their capacities in various skill and practice areas.

Learning and Knowledge Management (LKM) as a programme is aimed at encouraging and promoting the culture of learning among civil society organizations in the democratic governance sector in Kenya .

LKM is    informed by the innate desire of each person to   find our voice   and contribute to the body of knowledge. It advocates  for a shift  from   Information  Management to Knowledge Management  where  tacit  knowledge   derived  from peoples  experiences or indigenous  wisdom is  transformed into  explicit   knowledge through codification. Further it encourages horizontal, non formal relationships and open   sharing peer-learning.

One of the ways in which the Facility plans to achieve this is by hosting regular learning platforms/ forums that bring together CSOs, members of the public, government agencies and donors to discuss issues within the reform areas and to share methodologies, lessons and best practices from one another.

These forums are intended to also encourage and support networking and collaboration among CSOs themselves and between CSOs and their constituencies and to provide institutional framework and necessary funds to rapidly mobilize a civil society response to emerging issues in the democratic governance field.

FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

•     E-Learning Platforms
•     Public Learning Forums
•     Resource Centers

E-Learning Forums
The Facility will facilitate CSOs to form into caucuses based on their thematic areas of intervention. These groups, which will be called Communities of Practice (CoP), will have the main objective of facilitating discussions and knowledge sharing among these groups based on the principle of open, unstructured, civil society-driven dialogue. Communities of Practice will be thematic in nature.

Thematic Communities of Practice are social internet-based groups that bring together organizations and individuals working in a particular thematic area within the Democratic Governance sector.

Public  Learning Forums
These are public gatherings where people meet to acquire new information, knowledge, behaviour, skills, values, preferences, understanding or ways of doing things or update/ add on to existing one. The Facility will organize learning forums of different types depending on

(a) scope of participation i.e. persons invited to participate and

(b) the purpose of the forum.

There will be two (2) general types of forums:

•     General forums open to members of the public. These will aim to raise public awareness about a particular thematic issue; share/ ‘explain’ positions taken or preferred by CSOs on a particular topical issue or to mobilize public support for a particular issue.
•     General and specific forums open to CSOs: These would be forums targeting representatives of CSOs working in the sector and not other members of the public. In addition, specific forums may be called from time-to-time to bring together CSOs working in a specific issue, methodological or geographical area. Issue areas include women’s rights, minority rights, governance etc.  Methodological areas include research, lobbying, advocacy, capacity building etc. These forums may also be convened for selected CSOs to discuss particular issues of strategy.

Knowledge Products
The information derived from the E-learning Platforms and the Public Learning Forums will be analyzed and validated by a moderator after which Knowledge Products will be   produced. These may include booklets, newsletters advisory papers, among others.

These will contain information about general developments in the Democratic Governance sector in Kenya and elsewhere, legal, policy and constitutional developments that may have an impact on reforms, best practices from CSOs etc..