Tacit and Explicit Knowledge on African Fatherhood

Describe The Approaches Utilized To Measure / Assess This KM Initiative: 

One-off 12 week assessment of current information resources on our website, mapping analysis of visitors to key information areas and downloads by geographic locations within and outside Africa. Internal assessment by own staff. Discussion group of staff on barriers to knowledge access such as language, internet access, accessibility of texts etc.

Sector: 

Gender and Development

What Do You Think Are The Main Unanswered Questions Or Challenges Related To This Field Of Work?: 

Ease of building uncritical web based resources of global information that then needs contextualising and refining into useable information for targetted groups. Transferring explicit knowledge and published information resources into artifacts that can then create tacit knowledge in individuals and groups.

What Was The Purpose Or Motivation For Assessing This KM Initiative?: 

We want to access more funding for our knowledge acquisition and dissemination work but we lack tools for impact assessment and scaling up.

What Were The Most Important Lessons Learned About The Assessment Process?: 

Quantifying information access was relatively easy from web based stats but getting information on how information was used and is provoking attitudinal and institutional change far more difficult. The distinction and importance between creating tacit knowledge around fatherhood from what is essentially explicit knowledge on our website. The gap between what we provide as knowledge base and its transfers into behaviour change, institutional learning and practice is really hard for us to see with limited resources.

What Would You Do Differently Next Time?: 

Introduce a qualitative assessment to complement our quantitative stats. Look less on the geographical distribution of visitors and ask questions about how on the continent we can use other ways of KM in better networking. Analyse the frameworks for change in which we can lever our information and knowledge base with practitioners and fathers themselves.

Describe The KM Initiative: 

Research, policy and practice all need come together through active KM into positive action around African fatherhood. Where do we build our knowledge from? A myriad of information sources, data and examples need to be brought together and systemised.There is much available internationally but little available on the contiment. Contextualising information from the tacit experience of fathers in different cultures also needs to figure prominently if interventions are to be accepted and implemented in behaviour change models and institutional relationships with fathers.

What Advice Would You Give To Others Based On Your Experience?: 

Frame from the beginning what information is really crucial to show impact. Our quantifiable info through stats is easy to achieve but we've not really thought out how we translate information from technical areas into accessible information through editing for understandable content and getting over the barrier of low internet access by professionals and others who may need our information.

Country: 

Zimbabwe