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Welcome to the website of the Hivos Knowledge Programme. The platform for knowledge development on issues imperative to the global development sector. 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? The development sector needs new knowledge, and more specifically, appropriate knowledge to tackle specific knowledge gaps. This programme aims at developing knowledge on issues central to the work of civil society organisations and for the development sector at large. The main themes are: Civil Society Building, Promoting Pluralism, Civil Society in West Asia, Small Producer Agency in the Globalized Market and Digital Natives with a Cause?
Who cares about sustainability?
Why is it so hard to sustain the effects of NGO interventions? Agnes Nalubiri explores this question working from the Rwenzori region with Hivos’ partner KRC. The emerging findings in a messy context suggest that a toxic mix of aid chain dynamics is at work
Southern Perspectives on Civil Society Building
Civil Society Building continues to figure prominently in the development policy realm and so too does its northern bias, especially with regard to processes in Africa. Through the MA-research facility, the Hivos/ISS Civil Society Knowledge programme enables researchers and civil society organizations from the South to develop and share their views on key issues in the Civil Society Debate.
The art of framing
NGOs have been joining forces to increase their effectiveness, but what they really need to do is to form alliances with social movements as well to avoid working in isolation from broader social currents.
Talking Back Workshop
The Digital Natives with a Cause Knowledge programme aims to build a knowledge network of young people, practitioners and academia. The Talking Back workshop is the first of three international workshops in 2010 that aim to give visibility and a voice to the Digital Natives and to document and reflect upon their online initiatives for change. This first workshop will take place in Taipei from the 16th till the 18th of August.
Presentations and Notes on the workshop Microfinance at Risk
The workshop aimed to asses and discuss the impact of global crises on microfinance institutions.The panel consisting of Reynaldo Marconi, FOROLAC FR, Frank Streppel, Triodos Investment Management, Johan Bastiaensen, University of Antwerp and Harry Clemens (Hivos) discussed the impact of the financial crisis, economic crisis, and in context of development in the South: food crisis. Read the notes and the presentations. A paper by Reynaldo Marconi adressing the main theme will soon be publish...
Call for short essays
The developmental challenges facing the world are daunting. Extreme poverty and social exclusion persist at scale while socio-economic inequality and fundamentalism are even on the increase. Because of these and other dilemmas we are confronted with ever more questions. New knowledge on the changing terrain of development and social change are needed to get more insight into these dilemmas. But can knowledge also trigger change? If so, how? Is it about bridging the gap between research and p...
Ugandans search for common ground in run-up to 2011 elections
´Ugandans have been too engrossed with our differences. We have a history of tribalism that manifest itself in the idea that one has to create strong tribal entities that are able to dominate the othes. We must accept plurality as a fact and a gift and identify the common ground. This is a challenge for our political leadership, but also for each of us here.´ Key note speaker Bisshop Zac Niringiye conveyed this message to the participants of the pluralism knowledge programme conference in Ka...
East European and South American Conceptions of Civil Society
Working Paper 9 focuses on those countries in Eastern Europe and South America where civil society emerged as a cause celebre in the successful transition to democracy: Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, Argentina, Brazil and Chile.It offers a theoretical analysis of precisely how civil society was conceptualized by its protagonists in their pre-democratic contexts by studying their writings from the pre-democratic period. The latter have been largely ignored in later narratives which char...
Package Politics: Antagonism, Resistance, and Peace in Syrian Political Discourse
Working Paper 8 examines ways in which regional conflicts, especially the relationship with Israel, have an influence on the resilience of the Syrian regime. It does so based upon the analytical notion of discourse, which examines the role of discursive assumptions and norms in framing social practices. The norms and mechanisms inbuilt within discourse contribute to the shaping of the choices and practices of political actors in many ways: by determining the range of possible action, by legi...
Digital Natives Survey
Technology is all around us, do you also feel that the Internet or your cell phone has become an extension to your everyday lives? The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Hivos believe that the world we live in is changing rapidly and the rise of Internet technologies has a lot to do with it. As young users of technology adopt, adapt and use these new technologised tools to interact with their environment, new ways of change emerge. This survey attempts to capture some information whic...
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Changing perspectives in Latin America
Small producers in globalised markets
SciDev.Net
- US 'science for development' promises: it's time to act (01/01/1970)
- Sufferers urge progress on sickle cell drug Nicosan (01/01/1970)
- GM bananas could cut blindness, anaemia in East Africa (01/01/1970)
Twitter / hivosdotnet
- hivosdotnet: Who cares about sustainability?: Why is it so hard to sustain the effects of NGO interventions? Agnes Nalubiri exp... http://bit.ly/bfjOYI (01/01/1970)
- hivosdotnet: Southern Perspectives on Civil Society Building: Civil Society Building continues to figure prominently in the dev... http://bit.ly/cGfr5D (01/01/1970)
- hivosdotnet: The art of framing: NGOs have been joining forces to increase their effectiveness, but what they really need to do... http://bit.ly/9luoWr (01/01/1970)