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GRASSROOTS TO GLOBAL – KNOWLEDGE NETWORKING
Grassroots Knowledge
Nature provides abundant knowledge and those who
live in nature absorb it easily. They leverage such
knowledge for the benefit of human comfort, improve
the quality of life, preserve biodiversity, and
above all maintain harmony with nature. This is the
most appropriate way of life.
While knowledge of nature brings in practices that
over the period of time become traditional and time
tested, there is abundant creativity in villages to
find solutions to their problems. These solutions
are simple and cheap. They are generally made of
local available resources. Such creative solutions
are sustainable and user friendly.
Rural folks inherit a rich knowledge of traditional
practices and ways of living. This valuable
knowledge is fading away as there is no organization
which is making efforts to document and preserve it
for posterity. It is also important that these
knowledge holders should be given their due in terms
of awards and financial rewards. Their knowledge
ownership should be recognized through patents and
the legal rights thereof should be bestowed on
them. Today’s truth is far from this ideal.
With a view to scout and search these knowledge
holders, may be individual or community, and bring
their knowledge in to the formal sector for
recognition and rewards and also dissemination for
the benefit of the society at large, Honeybee
Network was formed 20 years ago in Gujarat by
Padmasri Prof Anil K Gupta.
What is Honeybee ?
The name Honey Bee signifies a philosophy of
discourse which is authentic, accountable and fair.
Honey Bee does two things which many of us don't.
Honey Bee collects pollen without impoverishing the
flowers and it connects flower to flower through
pollination. The idea is that when we collect
knowledge of people we should ensure that people
don't become poorer after sharing their insights
with us. Further, we should also connect one
innovator with another through feed back,
communication and networking in the local language.
We have to share it with the providers of the
knowledge what we did with the knowledge. If we
generate consultancies or other sources of income by
writing on people's knowledge, a fair share of this
income must accrue to the providers in as explicit a
manner as possible.
Honey Bee: An
experiment in
people to people learning:
We
write in the English language which connects us
globally but alienates us locally. We cannot reach
the people from whom we have learnt. Thus while we
grow in our careers and achieve wider recognition
and professional rewards, the people often suffer
silently. The ethics of knowledge extraction, its
documentation, dissemination and abstraction into
theories, institutions or technologies is thus our
central concern.
Why
you should join the Honey Bee network:
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If you feel totally dissatisfied
with the current mode of dominant mediocrity all
around us
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If you feel that lots of poor
people are so poor not because they can not
think, but because their ideas and initiatives
do not get space for expansion and fulfillment
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If you think that there are many
dreams that you had which you could not fulfill
in your life but would like others to fulfill
them sooner rather than later
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If you want to invest in green
ideas which involve risk but may help society as
well as our lives if successful
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If you want to contribute some of
your time ( ranging from one day in a month or a
year to one hour a day to may be few weeks a
year or more) in service of grassroots
innovators by contributing towards a skill and
resource bank. This bank will be accessible to
knowledge rich but economically poor or
disadvantaged farmers, artisans, pastoralists,
or urban slum dwellers having ideas or prototype
of new product or service or any other
inventors.
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If you yourself have some
innovative green idea and do not know who to
contact for making it grow, generate wealth and
make this world greener, fairer and more humane
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If you are a scientist or
technologist and can pursue research yourself or
guide your students to add value in local
knowledge and innovations
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If you are an entrepreneur who
wants to scale up some other innovator's
innovation
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If you are a policy maker who no
more enjoys stifling initiative of others and
instead enjoys helping others grow
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If you are a teacher who can
persuade your students to take pride in
augmenting grassroots innovations and help
liberate the colonized minds of the elite.
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Mission and
approach
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