WHY COMMUNITY? WHY NOW?

Posted by Letswalo Marobane on 30 March 2020, 11:35 SAST

Organisations, multi-sectoral stakeholder groups, crisis committees, sales teams, NGOs and support teams around the world – have been caught with their proverbial pants down.

While I laud both our government and many governments around the globe, listening to President Ramaphosa on Sunday night had my cerebral matter working at a pace. They covered so much and so many teams must have worked around the clock to get there, but will they learn from the process and will it be easier and better next time?

 

If the ecosystem of people from their disparate organisations,  addressing this crisis and the COVID- 19 lockdown find a way to capture process and knowledge as it happens cross-institutionally and cross-functionality – all is not lost. The reality, however, is that people are focused on the task at hand, doing their bit to make all the pieces of this complex lockdown work.

 

Imagine, government ministers, their respective departments, big business, small enterprise, the army, retail, local government and town councils, emergency services, financial support mechanisms – it’s a mammoth task to coordinate and of course messaging will at times be confused and people will get some stuff wrong.

 

Both the right and the wrong should be captured. Next time, which we hope is a very long way off, there may be a new administration in office. Do we really want them to start from ground zero?

 

Community, co-creation, collaboration, knowledge management …we have the tools, we just need the will to do it, and the understanding of the true value of capturing knowledge.

 

Writer: Janice Scheckter is a community builder and advocate, and CEO of Indigo Africa.

There are no comments

Sign in to add your comment.

Latest Posts

What if Tolstoy and Gandhi were online?
Last week I did something, I can’t recall doing too often across 30 years of running businesses. I...
read more
Achieving impact through the ‘everyone a change maker revolution’
I love the headline and wish it were mine. It comes from an interview with Bill Drayton (Founder,...
read more
A call to African youth to get involved
Africa is overflowing with potential. Our landscapes and people are beautiful, our land is rich and...
read more
An award winning blog - youth and civic engagement
In response to: How can young people work with their governments and civil society organizations to...
read more
Who gets involved - insights into civic engagement in Africa
PUBLISHED BY AFRO-BAROMETER https://afrobarometer.org/ 2021...
read more