Networking and learning
Overview
The most successful responses to health challenges build on local knowledge and commitment. That’s why Healthlink Worldwide works in partnership with organisations in developing countries that can engage with local communities.
It is also essential to link the issues faced by marginalised people, and the solutions they develop, with broader health and development efforts.
Healthlink Worldwide identifies the learning and knowledge that is emerging from the work of our partners and shares this within our network and across the sector globally. To facilitate this we have developed a number of processes that help organisations identify innovations and strengths in the work they are doing. We have also produced a number of support products for policy managers and practitioners based on the experience of others.
The work that we do with partners includes:
- Learning forums
- Learning networks
- Monitoring and evaluation
Learning forums
Our learning forums enable people to exchange their practical experience
of health communication, to engage with new approaches and tools and to
see what could work in their own context. The forums provide an invaluable
space for people to share knowledge, skills and experience. They are often
a component of our consultancies and programmes.
As part of the Support to the International Partnership against AIDS (SIPAA) programme, Healthlink Worldwide organised learning forums focusing on national HIV and AIDS partnerships and information and knowledge management. The forums played an important part in a more coordinated approach to HIV and AIDS.
We draw on an international network of trainers to deliver learning forums. The forums are often linked to Healthlink Worldwide’s participatory communication training (Quest) and our information and knowledge management services. Find out more about the techniques we use on the 'Learning forum methodologies' page.
Learning networks
Connecting people so that they can share their knowledge helps to make
sense of complex health and development situations.
A vibrant learning network has helped our partners in Africa to scale up Memory work – a child-centred communication approach that reduces stigma and discrimination about HIV and AIDS.
Community-based organisations have shared their experiences of applying Memory work and adapted the approach to different contexts as part of the International Memory Project. Memory work has now been introduced in India.
Monitoring and evaluation
Learning from what we have done in order to do it better: that’s at
the heart of our approach to evaluation. We also need to know what effect
our work has and how we are contributing to social change. Healthlink
Worldwide uses innovative monitoring and evaluation approaches such as
Most Significant Change, for example in the International Memory Project,
to help organisations
We are also part of a network that is examining how to monitor and evaluate the effects of communicating research.
Healthlink Worldwide and the Exchange programme
Healthlink Worldwide hosted
the Exchange programme
(which ran from 2000 - 2005) and we have incorporated many of the programme’s
key findings on networking and learning into our work. 
Although
the Exchange programme has now finished, information on its activities
and findings is available on the Exchange website.