PeerConnect
Leveraging the Power of Community
PeerConnect brings together professionals with common interests through a unique suite of online services that build trust, increase productivity and enhance effectiveness
We Connect Professionals
Are you a professional facing a challenge in your work? Do you wish that you could find others who have faced this challenge to offer you advice?
With PeerConnect, now you can!
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He posed his question to 2,000 colleagues in the Food and Nutrition Security Community, one of twelve email-based consultation forums – called “Solution Exchange” – convened by United Nations Agencies in India between 2005 and 2010 connecting professionals from government, donors, non-profit organizations, academia and the private sector. Over the next two weeks he received responses from fourteen Community members; most of them citing various statistics and investigations into possible causes.
Then one member, a small farmer in Thane district of Maharasthra, explained it. As some of his neighbors switched to more lucrative crops and fewer sowed pulses, it became harder to keep hungry cows away from the remaining pulse plots. As a result, everyone eventually decided to switch. So pulse production was declining in India because the cows were eating it!
When the experts talk directly to the farmers, it seems, they can get unexpected answers. If you don’t have all the perspectives around the table, you’re going to get the answer wrong. That is what a community is for, and why it’s so important if you're a professional to be part of one.
If you can interact with professional colleagues across the range of locations and organizations where they work, you can become better informed, more networked, more effective as a professional, and more influential as a group. You can solve bigger problems faster, with fewer “unintended consequences.” And you can leverage your community to disseminate solutions, influence policies, and have a greater impact on making the world’s countries more resilient, equitable, greener, healthier, safer or better run. And these days, with the race against the clock to save the planet, communities are more needed than ever.
This is where PeerConnect comes in.
We Build Communities
The PeerConnect concept is based on community-building. We bring together professionals of a common discipline or interest but different perspectives to generate familiarity and trust through information- and knowledge-sharing, collaboration and teamwork. The result is a cohesive community that enhances individual effectiveness and collective influence.
PeerConnect’s suite of services incorporate the learnings from over twenty years of experience in a wide range of developing countries and international organizations on how to identify and cultivate vibrant, productive and impactful professional communities.
Each service is offered on a dedicated platform expressly selected and adapted to facilitate a type of group interaction: Share, a social networking space; Consult, an email-based moderated consultation forum; Collaborate, small-group workspaces; and Engage, a portal for constituency-targeted applications. In addition, Collect, a document repository, compiles and indexes resources derived from community conversations.
We Make a Difference
PeerConnect can benefit
Communities of Practice and professional associations, enabling members to consult their colleagues for better-informed decisions
Large-scale organizations, incorporating knowledge from staff and partners into policies, programs and projects
Business Support Organizations, facilitating alliances and partnerships across their client base
Frontline workers, promoting coordination and collaboration between field-based organizations
Professionals in any field, building mutually beneficial relationships with peers from different organizational, occupational and locational perspectives