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Topics Knowledge programme

Civic Driven Change – Emerging narrative, new practice?

Hivos has been part of the core group of Dutch private aid agencies that drive the emerging narrative of civic driven change. In October 2008, a first seminar explored the theoretical framework of CDC. Last week, ISS hosted a follow up seminar to explore the practice of CDC by examining a number of civic driven change case studies. In the words of Alan Fowler: ‘cdc needs to be bashed and questioned, in order to gain more robustness’ A lively series of debates followed. Civic Driven Change tou...

Members of the Indonesia Regional Team

The Regional Teams of the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme are country-based groups of academics and practitioners defining the objectives and the content of the programme. The team is led by the regional coordinator and her/his institution as the core partner of Hivos and Kosmopolis. For Indonesia this is the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS) at the Graduate School of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.

Pressure-cooking for progress

Knowledge is needed to effectively serve poor and marginalised groups by making grounded choices for strategies and projects, and to timely adapt to change. How can development organisations acquire this knowledge? Hire more consultants? Go to the university? Development organisations need to build their own knowledge base and their own strategies to make this base grow. Development organisations need more tools and interactions to drive their own, practice-based forms of learning. A key elem...
Wikipedia picture, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_cooking

Innovation in Development Cooperation

The financial crisis clearly shows the need for innovations. On 14 November the Social TRade Organisation, STRO, organized a conference Innovation in Development Cooperation.At the conference representatives from the financial sector (bank representatives from ING, Rabobank and Oikocredit) together with development experts from PSO, Flying Doctors and Hivos discussed the need for, possibilities of and problems with innovations. It was concluded that the development sector could learn from inn...

Civic Driven Change

If states, markets and NGOs fail to bring about change and social justice, then who will? Can citizens come up with new perspectives on social change? Are civic driven changes a potential solution to global political problems? They might. In fact they are...

Value chain governance and endogenous growth

This two year process aims to improve the development and poverty reduction outcome of policy measures and development interventions in value chain governance. Activities include an academic and position paper write shop, set up of a digital library, policy review of intervention theories used by firms, NGOs and governments, and translation into intervention strategies through online discussion and an agenda-setting conference.

Development Policy Review Network

The Development Policy Review Network is a network of development experts and policymakers in the Netherlands and Belgium who aim to reduce the gap between science, policy and development practice. To that end the DPRN organises and supports processes aimed at creating informed debate and synergy between the various sectors. Hivos is involved in two DPRN trajectories entitled Gender Mainstreaming and Value chains, inclusion & endogenous growth.
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Tags: Kyrgyzstan, Knowledge programme

The Challenge of Pluralism in India

South Asia has been hailed as a region of significant diversity and pluralism for a long time. However, over the last decades, it has also been a hotbed of multiple forms of intolerance, such as religious, ethnic, linguistic chauvinisms and intolerance often manifested in sporadic as well as organised forms of violence. The violence in Gujarat in 2002, for instance, has brought home the concerns about the ease with which mobilisation could be done for genocidal politics.

Centre for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies

 In Indonesia, Hivos cooperates with the Center for Religious & Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS) associated with the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. CRCS is the only institution in Indonesia offering a graduate programme on religious studies from a non-religiously affiliated perspective. CRCS aims to promote the development of a democratic, multicultural and just society in Indonesia.
CRCS

Colophon

 The website www.hivos.net is published by Stichting Hivos, The Hague.

Themes

Civil Society Building programme aims to better understand and improve the contribution of CSB efforts to bring about changes in the unequal balance of power in favour of vulnerable and marginalised groups.The Promoting Pluralism programme has been initiated after several years of Hivos’ partners voicing concern about various forms of fundamentalism inhibiting their work.What are the roles and opportunities for civil society organizations in closed societies? The aim of the Civil Society in W...

Short Intro

Together with local organisations in developing countries, Hivos seeks to contribute to a free, fair and sustainable world in which citizens -women and men - have equal access to the resources, knowledge and opportunities for their development. Apart from providing financial and political support for local civil society organisations, Hivos is active in networking, lobbying and knowledge integration at the national and international level. In 2007 Hivos started to develop a knowledge programm...

Guiding questions

In cooperation with our partners in India, Indonesia, Uganda and the Netherlands, Hivos searches for answers to the following questions: 1. How can we understand the appeal of fundamentalisms in selected regions and what is their impact on civil society? 2. What are the conditions under which pluralism is most likely to develop and flourish?3. How can civil society organisations successfully promote pluralism in practice?

Methodology

The general methodology in the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme is grounded in a concept of critical co-operative inquiry. This method is based on a participative worldview that considers human beings as co-creating their reality through participation: through their experience, their imagination and intuition, their thinking and their action. This participatory worldview is at the heart of our inquiry methodologies. Participation is our core strategy and demands a (self)-reflexive cri...

Background and objectives

In the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme, Hivos works with academics and development practitioners to promote a culture of tolerance and dialogue.

Pluralism: An Introduction

In many places around the world, people are faced with the growth of intolerance. In several countries where Hivos works, partners in civil society signal a rise of fundamentalisms rooted in religion, ethnic affiliation, nationalism, social class or other value systems. These identities are a central part of who we are. However, where belief or value systems become absolute – leaving no room to alternative interpretations – and are imposed on others, we speak of ‘fundamentalism’. Women, gay...

Introduction to Civil Society Building

23/06/2008 In Hivos’ vision, strengthening civil society is at the core of social transformation. Over the last 15 years, Hivos has defined its strategy in this respect as ‘civil society building’ (CSB). The main drive is to facilitate or enable endogenous processes of association among citizens in the South and linking and mobilising support for these processes at the global and national levels.

Methodology

23/06/2008 The Knowledge Programme aims to contribute to an ongoing, iterative process of knowledge integration, including three important elements: (1) knowledge production (research and transformation of existing knowledge) (2) knowledge dissemination (outreach and capacity building) (3) knowledge application (utilisation for societal problem-solving).The following sections will briefly explain the activities based on both research and practice. It will also describe how knowledge will be transforme...

Guiding Questions

23/06/2008 The Knowledge Programme will focus on the following three main questions. 1. How can we understand the dynamics of civil society formation and the role of local actors in this process? 2. How do external actors contribute to this process? 3. How does civil society building as a process contribute to structural changes in unequal power balances in society?By focusing on these three questions, the Programme will especially take the issues of gender, authority and leadership, innovation, and...

Background & Objectives

23/06/2008 Hivos and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) have been working together since 2005 in a joint effort to contribute to the debate on Civil Society Building (CSB). At the core of this collaboration is the interaction between practitioners and researchers to facilitate knowledge development, dissemination and application. This process – also called knowledge integration – has the potential to be of enormous value to the development sector involved in CSB. Both organisations have the ambition...

Methodology

Knowledge Integration The methodology used is knowledge integration. By integrating various forms of (new) knowledge - academic knowledge, practitioner knowledge, educational and cultural expressions of knowledge - new insights can be created and strategies formulated that contribute to the development of new policies and practices for the development sector. This is not a linear process of knowledge production, but a rather muddled continuum of integrated interactions.

Background & Objectives

 Background Knowledge development is not new to Hivos. Over the years, it has funded small-scale knowledge-related projects and supported Southern research initiatives. However, it became increasingly clear that this knowledge did not directly address the many complex challenges Hivos and its partners are faced with. The knowledge the development sector - and in particular civil society actors - requires is often unavailable, inaccessible or inappropriate. A new approach is needed....
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