THINK! è un think tank non profit internazionale che ha lo scopo di diffondere la conoscenza su come le tecnologie digitali possano attivare processi di innovazione e sviluppo sostenibile
Honey Bee Network
CATEGORIA: Qualità della vita (Vedi tutti
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TAGLINE: collects and disseminates traditional knowledge and helps facilitate and spread grassroots innovation
KEYWORDS: eLearning, eHealth
DOVE: India
Honey Bee Network is an organization which collects and disseminates traditional knowledge and helps facilitate and spread grassroots innovation throughout India and elsewhere.It's a crucible of like-minded individuals, innovators, farmers, scholars, academicians, policy makers, entrepreneurs and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A Network having presence in more than seventy five countries, what has made Honey Bee Network tight knit and efficiently functional is its philosophy. Honey Bee signifies a philosophy of discourse, which is authentic, accountable and fair. The Network has been woven around three basic ideals. The Network believes that a knowledge system in order to become sustainable has to be both just and fair. Hence, while collecting knowledge from the knowledge holder, the Network has made it a norm to acknowledge the knowledge provider with name and reference, if otherwise not desired by the knowledge provider. This particular practice has come handy in protecting the IPR of the knowledge provider. In the second place, the source of knowledge i.e. in the case of Honey Bee Network, the traditional knowledge holders and grassroots innovators must be acknowledged, if otherwise desired so by the knowledge holders themselves. Finally, any proceed that accrues from the value addition of local traditional knowledge and innovation; a fair and reasonable share must go back to the knowledge holders. These have been the guiding principles of the Network, which are fundamental to the functioning of the network and constitute the major non-negotiable for the Network.
Honey Bee Network was realized around 1988-89 that, both on efficiency and ethical grounds, the prevalent mode of knowledge extraction from people, and dissemination among them, were non-sustainable. This knowledge asymmetry has been historic. Knowledge has been extracted, documented without any acknowledgement to the source of knowledge. The documented knowledge has not been communicated to the knowledge holder for feedback. These practices have not only impoverished the knowledge holders by pushing them further down in the oblivion, but also have hampered the growth of an informal knowledge system, that is robust in nurturing creativity. While there were numerous public/ private channels for diffusing innovations produced in formal sector, similar channels for diffusion and value addition of informal innovations were not available. So much so that knowledge rich and economically poor people could not benefit, particularly in marginal environments, from the formal technologies, nor could they learn from the innovations, due to lack of extensive knowledge network. People’s knowledge has been utilized in some cases for developing value-added products. In most cases, the beneficiaries of value added products were not the same as the providers of the knowledge. Thus the knowledge asymmetry reinforces the subsequent asymmetry in communication, power, benefit and reward sharing. The benevolence of the knowledge providers becomes the source of their impoverishment.
Over the last sixteen years or so, the Honey Bee Network has lived the very spirit of the philosophy that it holds so dearly. Moreover, the actions that have followed the philosophy have grown and matured over a period of time and their trajectory of maturation has been based upon the strong realization of the essence of the philosophy. ‘Honey Bee’ Newsletter, the creative mouthpiece of the network, is published in seven Indian languages (Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Oriya) other than English. The very logic tells that any documentation and dissemination of local and traditional knowledge and innovations in English, certainly connects us globally but alienates locally. Living out the concern, the regional language versions reach out to the thousands grassroots knowledge holders, who otherwise would have been alienated from the benefits of knowledge, they themselves contribute in the first place. Acknowledging the very source of the traditional knowledge, the Honey Bee Newsletter and its regional versions carry stories of the local ingenuity with the consent of the knowledge holder. Another source of acknowledging the local genius has been preparing the database of the traditional knowledge and grassroots innovations and Honey Bee Network, over the last twenty years has documented more than 1,00,000 ideas, innovations and traditional knowledge practices. Honey Bee, true to its metaphor, has been the source of pollination and cross-pollination of ideas, creativity and grassroots genius, without taking away the nectar from the flower for ever.
The Honey Bee Network is supported by SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institution), which maintains the network's database of innovations, and offers logistical assistance in protecting Intellectual Property Rights for grassroots innovators and drumming up venture funding for their inventions.
MORE INFORMATION:
Email: honeybee@sristi.org
Website: http://www.sristi.org/hbnew/
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