We have heard several times that civil society organizations (CSOs) have not yet documented their good practices on how they do their work, especially in the field of CSO participation in local governance. For one reason or another, good practices are not known or have not been shared, but we have the sense that they are out there – stories waiting to be told to a wider group.

The Strengthening Decentralized Governance (S-DG) project, an initiative led by CODE-NGO and its member networks, the Coalition for Bicol Development (CBD), the Central Visayas Network of NGOs (CENVISNET), and the Mindanao Coalition of Development NGO Networks (MINCODE), seeks to share good practices in its own way. The culture and practice of sharing were enhanced and even deepened during the Peer-Learning Exchange and Knowledge Development and Management Workshop. Held last October 6 to 7, 2017 in Naga City, the activity brought together the three member networks and sought to develop the skills needed to share good practices effectively while learning about the good practices from the Bicol Region, Central Visayas Region and Southern Mindanao Region – the places where they come from.

The start of the peer-learning exchange (PLE) included a tour of the Jesse Robredo Museum led by the gracious host, CBD. During the workshop, facilitated by S-DG Project Officer Clare Salvador and the CBD team including their Executive Director Joy Bañares, Regional Project Coordinator Jessica Capricho and Regional Project Officer Ronel Obar, each group from CBD, CENVISNET and MINCODE were asked to share what they were doing in engaging provincial governments and regional government agencies as well as what they are doing to improve organizational capacities. At the end of the workshop each group were then asked to come up with short case documents which they can use to promote what it is they are doing.

A key take-away from the learning that happened was that the knowledge management process, expertly shared by the Knowledge Development and Management Program Officer Celia de Jesus, may not be something new to what organizations naturally do. We might not call it “knowledge management” but we discovered that report-writing for donors, taking pictures and posting on social media and sharing different posts are part and parcel of “knowledge management”. So writing about passing a provincial ordinance and posting it on Facebook may be part of knowledge development and management. The challenge is how to make this process integrated in the system of the organization and assigning person/s to get things going.

We acknowledge that there are publications and multimedia (CD-ROMs and photos included) on best practices on local governance, and yet there is a need to gather stories that are unpublished to date. At this day and age, we need to take a look at the impact of these good practices and ultimately replicate these to make good local governance the norm rather than the exception.

Sandino Soliman is the Project Manager of the Strengthening Decentralized Governance Project of CODE-NGO, in Partnership with Misereor of Germany.