Knowledge is power

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.”
Lloyd Alexander      Author of a number of fantasy books for children and adolescents

This week I started lecturing at the Professional Environment module of the
Management of Development course at Van Hall Larenstein in Wageningen. We got ourselves into the bits and pieces  of organizations and their environment.

It was a privilege to be in touch with 32 students from 14 nations in Asia and  Africa and being able to develop some mental images about the institutional environment in different contexts. The more I engaged with the group the more I realized that they were the experts (in terms of 'experiencing') and I was in many ways the learner. Nevertheless it was a valuable exchange of images and the safety of the classroom allowed people to speak out about their own situations
in their home countries. I am looking forward to a very exciting period of exchange the coming 7 weeks while we are putting the pieces together to transform our own mental images in actionable intervention strategies that can be employed by individuals as well as the organizations they are part of.

At the same time I visited the websites of some of the actors in learning and exchange. And given the vast number of exchanges about International Cooperation coming up in the new year in the Netherlands, it did not drop off the priority list of policy makers and decision makers. I just hope that the voice of the real experts will be heard at these gatherings, and I will encourage our course participants to be part of them.