Courtney S. Roberts

Principal and Founder, Moonshot Global, USA

While knowledge has always been at the core of global development work, there has been a shift over time from the belief that expert knowledge transferred and disseminated can yield change and spur development to an acknowledgement that local knowledge is necessary and desired to create and implement sustainable change. There is now widespread recognition of the importance of the leveraging both expert and local knowledge that is drawn from the public and private sectors as well as from constituents who live in the communities most affected by development programs.

My hope is that pursuit of the goals in the Agenda Knowledge for Development that echo the importance of this shift will lead to the more deliberate design and implementation of global development programmes and achievement of long-lasting social change that enables individuals and communities to thrive regardless of geography. In my own work, I seek opportunities to encourage clients to integrate learning and reflection points in their work and to analyze as they are implementing whether they should alter their approaches and adapt to the complexities that they face in implementation. Knowledge and learning are not disembodied forces for change but central to our efforts to help improve people’s lives through efforts that aim to achieve measureable and sustainable results.