Knowledge Sharing & Poverty Alleviation

Alex Steffen reports on "leapfrogging through local wisdom"

what really captivates my imagination here is the way in which I see a marriage of approaches emerging here: a very sensible, community-based approach, which starts by finding and supporting the capacities of the poor, and focusing on the capital the community already has in its relationships, skills and local knowledge, and a redistribute-the-future approach, which recognizes that the tools poor people most need are the ones which help make them as independent as possible from the exploitative systems around them. It's a form of leapfrogging, certainly, but it transcends the technologies involved to look at the relationships and ways of thinking those technologies enable.