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.