Hi Richard,

What a challenging topic to take on and something that can have such a huge impact. I have been working in Sierra Leone for the past 5 years and what we have found is that by providing a platform for the community to come together to work on a project opens up opportunities for social cohesion.

I would be very interested in the types of tools you are using within the communities to get at social learning.

Great idea!

The experiential learning aspects to this problem make it much more tangible and looks like fun too. Are you finding any challenges with getting whole community buy in? how many people are able to participate in the game?

I work in a rural community in Sierra Leone with an NGO called OneVillage Partners and it is a challenge to make sure everyone has an opportunity to participate. We have developed a program/model that is mostly picture based so that anyone can be involved in the planning and decision making as most of the population is illiterate. Looking at how this mini-grid would be the most beneficial to rural communities I would suggest making sure as much as possible if not all of it uses pictures, even during instructions if you are not already doing so.

Good luck!!

Hi Carolina,
I work with an NGO called OneVillage Partners. As a small start up we were constantly trying to connect with others in the field trying to find out what interventions were already out there. We too found that many keep their leanings in a ‘box’ end so many end up recreating the wheel. I really like your ideas to try and connect organizations and people to share lessons learned.

One thing to think about is how to get organizations and people to join this network. There are so many different platforms that this could work on what do you envision this to look like? When I was doing research I would have loved to not only read and learn about other ideas but also to be able to connect and ask specific questions about what went well or what one would have done differently if they could do it again.