Why the GRASSROOTS GLOBAL NETWORK?

The underlying thinking behind GRASSROOTS GLOBAL NETWORK is to bridge the gaps between theoretical and discourse-based knowledge developed in academic institutions and the actual field milieu using or practicing that body of knowledge. Generally observed, there is mostly a unidirectional flow of knowledge from universities or research institutions to the rural/urban communities who are treated recipient ends of development interventions in majority of the countries. The Grassroots Institute envisages to bank for research, trainings, documentation, publication, participatory initiatives and discourses upon local and Indigenous knowledge systems and communities’ primary experiences and experiments. The free exchange among institutions, organizations, individuals and communities can better help mainstream the grassroots’ knowledge sets, local innovations, local needs and local technologies in the contemporary research, teaching and extension agenda of academic institutions/platforms and development agencies. Obviously, the academic institutions and research organizations need to be supported and oriented to the real and grassroots issues, strengths, dynamism and needs of the common people, especially Indigenous communities. In order to realize this paradigm construct, all teachers and researchers in academic institutions should contribute to the field implementation projects, and all field practitioners and practice-based organizations should teach or assist the students to impart their repository of lifelong experiences. This way, all teachers will become field practitioners too. They would have a combine of the theoretical knowledge and practical insights at a time. This philosophy of bringing two opposite/distant ends together, the “grassroots” (The Grassroots Institute and offshoots) validates the same interface of ground reality with the rhetoric or theory. With the above background and objectives, The Grassroots Institute has been facilitating the GRASSROOTS GLOBAL NETWORK.