Communities of Practice

Vicky Cosstick has formed successful communities of practice for a number of organisations: HIV and AIDS international team for CAFOD (2005 to present)Advocacy international team for Action Against Hunger (2009 to present)International working groups on gender (2007) and civil society (2008) for CARE UK.Power and pastoralism for OXFAM GB in E Africa (Sep 2010)

A community of practice (CoP) is a well-established and recognised organisational tool to develop cross-organisational collaboration, sharing and learning to enhance programme delivery in a specialist area. All the above CoP have been established through a 2-5 day workshop that brings together an international group with formal or informal responsibilities in a given technical area in order to establish agendas for shared action and learning, and determine commitments to continuing to meet, share and learn – both face to face and using communications technologies.