Call to Action: turn your experience into a living knowledge base

[Pete Smith]

Many alumni carry lessons that never made it into a formal report: the workaround that kept a programme running, the early warning signal everyone missed, the staff-security choice that felt impossible at the time, the coordination habit that quietly saved weeks.

The problem is obvious: when people move on, that institutional knowledge goes with them. And in our world, that’s more than just a shame.

So the idea is to extend our AI-based research assistant Eglantyne to include a new, high-value source type: Practitioner Experience Notes, written by alumni. These won’t be news and they won’t be generic theory. They’ll be first-hand, field-smart reflections — indexed, searchable, and (when relevant) prioritised in answers. Answers that we will make available through our AI Research Assistant tool Egalntyne to fellow professionals and the general public; we want to share knowledge, not keep it to ourselves.

This is a genuine ‘many small contributions become something powerful’ project. If even a fraction of our alumni write a few pieces, we can build a resource that helps colleagues for years. It needn’t just be field experiences – memoirs, book reviews, strategy papers – whatever you feel might be useful.

What we’re asking you to write

A Practitioner Experience Note is a short article based on your opinions and experience. If you are writing about lessons learned in the field, think: ‘Here’s what happened, here’s what we did, here’s what I wish someone had told me beforehand.’

We’re looking for notes like this – not pretending this list is in any way exhaustive:

• Early warning & famine: signals, thresholds, politics of declaring, data quality, community insights vs dashboards
  Example: Early warning systems for famine in Africa (1970s–80s): what we got right, what we didn’t.
• Negotiation & access: working with authorities, non-state actors, red lines, humanitarian principles in practice
• Working with communities: feedback mechanisms, safeguarding, trust rebuilding after harm, accountability under stress
• Coordination realities: cluster meetings, duplication, info-sharing culture, how to make coordination useful rather than performative
• Staff security: decision-making under pressure; travel/compound rules; local partner risk; kidnaps/armed groups; comms blackouts
  Example: Staff security decisions during the Rwanda crisis: what actually worked.
• Supply chain & logistics: last-mile delivery, customs, cold chain, local procurement pitfalls
• Programme quality: rapid assessments, MEAL under constraints, adapting interventions mid-response
• Leadership & teams: managing mixed teams, burnout, duty of care, hard personnel calls

• Advocacy & media: speaking up safely, comms during conflict, protecting staff/partners while influencing change

If you’re not sure whether your idea ‘counts’, it probably does.

Can I write about anything else?

• Yes. Practitioner Experiences of field work were the first thing we thought about. But ideas have progressed, and we expect PENs to cover a wide range of topics eg Technical reflections, Policy commentary, Book or article reviews, Biographies and obituaries,  Historical reflections, Leadership or ethical essays

I understand why I need to write the PEN and give it a title, but why all those other fields? Dates, Audience, Key words etc?

Once you have written your PEN, our AI Research Assistant Eglantyne has two challenges to solve:

• How can Eglantyne find it to answer questions? The more you tell Eglantyne about your article, the easier it will be for her to find it when relevant
• Having found it, how can Eglantyne decide how to use your PEN in the context of a specific question? Is it a biography or a practical piece of field advice? Is it only relevant in that country or does it have a wider significance? Is the advice forever or was it time-boxed?

Some of this information you are asked to provide yourself, other aspects Eglantyne will guess, but let you make the final decision as author of the PEN.

Suggested length

To make this easy to contribute to and easy to use:

• Ideal length: 800–1,500 words (this size is the ‘sweet spot’ for current AI technology behind the scenes)
• Short is fine: 400–800 words (‘one lesson, one story’)

• Longer is welcome when needed: up to 2,500 words if it genuinely benefits from depth

Some of you might already have even longer articles, or feel that the topics involved are so complex they require long articles. That’s fine.  Please discuss with me and we will figure a way.

This is not meant to be academic. Clarity beats polish.

A simple recommended structure (so it’s easy to read and search)

You can follow this template loosely if you wish, but don’t feel constrained:

1. Title (clear and specific)
2. Where/when (country/region + approximate dates or period)
3. Context in 5 lines (what was happening; what your role was)
4. The problem (what made it hard/urgent/uncertain)
5. What we did (decisions, actions, approaches)
6. What worked / what didn’t (be honest — that’s the value)
7. Lessons learned (3–7 bullet points is perfect)
8. Watch-outs (risks, unintended consequences, red flags)
9. If I had to do it again… (practical advice)

1. Keywords (10–20 terms you’d want someone to search)

If you prefer a narrative style, that’s fine too — the key is that it ends with practical takeaways.

Sensible boundaries (important)

We want this to be useful and safe so the obvious guidelines given we are sharing this openly:

• No names or identifying details of individuals at risk (staff, partners, community members)
• Avoid operational specifics that could compromise security (routes, timings, sensitive methods, etc.)
• If you’re unsure, write it as if it might be widely read and we’ll help with light redaction if needed

• You can include ‘what happened’ without revealing ‘how to replicate it’

How it will work (high level)

We’ll provide a simple submission form where you can write your PEN (or copy and paste from Word) and then tell Eglantyne more information about your article eg:

• select country/countries and themes
• add start/end dates (even approximate)
• add keywords

On our side, the system will index these as Practitioner Experience Notes. When someone asks Eglantyne a question, these notes will be treated as high-weight sources — not because they’re ‘more true’ than everything else, but because first-hand field learning is often the missing ingredient in generic summaries.

Also: the number of Practitioner Experience Notes pulled into any one answer will be small — often 1–5, rarely more — so each note can genuinely matter.

Your article will appear in ‘public domain’ searches where appropriate as a cited source.  Because of GDPR, authorship will be defined as follows:

• If the search is being made by alumni, your name can be displayed, or you can stay anonymous if you wish.
• If the search is being made by public, authorship will be ‘Save the Children Alumni Association’. If we don’t do that and published names, we would need to go into a much more formal tier of legal compliance that we want to avoid if possible.

What to write first (if you want a prompt)

If you’d like a starting point, pick one:

• A decision I got right (and why).
• A decision I got wrong (and what I learned).
• The early warning sign we missed.
• The one coordination habit that changed everything.
• A security rule that sounded bureaucratic until it wasn’t.
• How to work effectively with [X] stakeholder in [Y] context.

• Three things I wish new arrivals knew in week one.

FAQs

• I worked for Save the Children for 10 years – how many Practitioner Notes can I write? As many as you like.
• I was working for another NGO when I learned some really important lessons. Can I write about that experience? Yes, but please use discretion and make explicitly clear this was not a Save the Children programme
• Is this field work only? I specialised in Grant funding in Finance and think I learned a lot that would be useful to pass on. Yes, we are expecting the majority of articles to be field based, but there are no restrictions at all. Please write and submit.
• Another alumni has already written on what I was thinking about. Is it worth me doing the same? 100% yes! First two alumni having very similar opinions adds weight; and yes, any small differences you have will be worth exploring.
• Can I change my mind after I’ve submitted a PEN? I’ve had another thought.  Yes, you can add, amend and delete your PENs as often as you like. No restrictions at all.

Is it finished already?

Eglantyne is ready to help you now. She can talk to you in 3 styles – Concise, Medium or Essay. In Essay mode she’ll do a lot more research and thinking. And she already speaks two languages fluently –  UK English and US English. She will doubtless learn a few more in the future.

She isn’t very far advanced with assessing PENs yet – she can find them but is still learning their relative importance. She is prone to over-stating their importance at the moment. By about the end of March we will help her to give a more balanced perspective. The importance of a PEN to a particular question depends upon both the question and the PEN. Eglantyne has much to work out!

Pete

• This topic was modified 2 months ago by Pete Smith.
• This topic was modified 2 months ago by Pete Smith.

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