A Newsletter of Creativity and Innovation at the Grassroots
GIAN InnovationDatabase Information Discussion
An invitation to join a global movement to conserve biodiversity through documentation, experimentation and value addition and dissemination of local innovations by farmers, pastoralist, artisans, horticulturalists et al. you may also participate in the campaign for protection of Intellectual Property Rights of Grassroots level innovators.
What is Honeybee ?
The name Honey Bee signifies a philosophy of discourse which is authentic, accountable and fair. Honey Bee does two things which many of us don't. Honey Bee collects pollen without impoverishing the flowers, and it connects flower to flower through pollination. The idea is that when we collect knowledge of people we should ensure that people don't become poorer after sharing their insights with us. Further, we should also connect one innovator with another through feed back, communication and networking in the local language. We have to share it with the providers of the knowledge what we did with the knowledge. If we generate consultancies or other sources of income by writing on people's knowledge, a fair share of this income must accrue to the providers in as explicit a manner as possible. Over the years we have documented innovations, traditional practices & collected outstanding examples of contemporary knowledge to form a 10,000 strong database (Honey Bee Database of Grassroots Innovations) part of which we have converted as multimedia database.
Honey Bee: An experiment in people to people learning:
We write in the English language which connects us globally but alienates us locally. We cannot reach the people from whom we have learnt. Thus while we grow in our careers and achieve wider recognition and professional rewards, the people often suffer silently. The ethics of knowledge extraction, its documentation, dissemination and abstraction into theories, institutions or technologies is thus our central concern.
GIS Maps of Development Indicators and Innovations in Gujarat
Why you should join the Honey Bee network.
- If you feel totally dissatisfied with the current mode of dominant mediocrity all around us
- If you feel that lots of poor people are so poor not because they can not think, but because their ideas and initiatives do not get space for expansion and fulfillment
- If you think that there are many dreams that you had which you could not fulfill in your life but would like others to fulfill them sooner rather than later
- If you want to invest in green ideas which involve risk but may help society as well as our lives if successful
- If you want to contribute some of your time ( ranging from one day in a month or a year to one hour a day to may be few weeks a year or more) in service of grassroots innovators by contributing towards a skill and resource bank. This bank will be accessible to knowledge rich but economically poor or disadvantaged farmers, artisans, pastoralist, or urban slum dwellers having ideas or prototype of new product or service or any other inventors.
- If you yourself have some innovative green idea and do not know who to contact for making it grow, generate wealth and make this world greener, fairer and more humane
- If you are a scientist or technologist and can pursue research yourself or guide your students to add value in local knowledge and innovations
- If you are an entrepreneur who wants to scale up some other innovator's innovation
- If you are a policy maker who no more enjoys stifling initiative of others and instead enjoys helping others grow
- If you are a teacher who can persuade your students to take pride in augmenting grassroots innovations and help liberate the colonized minds of the elite
then just join the Honey Bee network....
GIAN InnovationDatabase Information Discussion
