In January, Agrilinks turns its attention to knowledge management (KM) and its role in furthering individual and organizational learning. This is, in fact, Agrilinks’ raison d’etre: a platform to capture and share critical knowledge, good practices and lessons learned in food security and agricultural development, in support of Feed the Future's programming. Yet, we don’t often stop to share what we’ve learned about KM itself, which is in part why we’re dedicating this January to the art and science of this practice.

Whether you are in the field implementing a project, in the lab doing research or working on policy and strategy issues in your home office, knowledge management can help you work more effectively and efficiently. While it can seem like an esoteric concept at times, you’ve participated in knowledge management any time you have transferred knowledge to a colleague, joined an event to learn from others or documented and shared your own knowledge internally or externally.

Transition times are important moments to codify knowledge and share lessons learned. This quarter, the Agrilinks team is closing out the Knowledge-Driven Agricultural Development (KDAD) project, which has run the Agrilinks platform among other KM efforts over the past five years. (Don’t worry - the Agrilinks platform will stay strong under a new implementing activity!)

As we wrap up our activities, the KDAD team would like to take the opportunity to share some of the KM-related resources we’ve developed and curated during our tenure and invite other practitioners to share, too. We would love to showcase some of your lessons learned and good practices. If you have any stories to share about how you have applied knowledge from Agrilinks (including our website and event series), we’d love to hear them, too!

As always we look forward to hearing your thoughts and receiving your contributions – email [email protected] with any questions, or log in and leave a comment below!