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A Knowledge asset is a set of common principles emerging from individual experiences. The Constellation facilitates the building of Knowledge Assets so that communities around the world can learn from each others' real life experience. Here is an extract of a Knowledge asset about 'Linking care and prevention':
| Common principles | Experiences | Contact |
| If target groups take the lead in care and prevention strategies, responses will be more creative, effective and sustainable. | It's not shampoo, it’s a condom! In Bombay, the AASDHA project took advice of sexworkers and made condom packages that look like shampoo packs to avoid the stigma around it. | Ishdeep Kohli |
| Tuktuk drivers in Mattakkuliya give free rides to VCT centre. Through strong community invovlement and use of music events, tuktuk drivers (amongst many others) cared for their passengers, provided prevention messages and referred people to VCT | Kalana Peiris |
Read more Knowledge assets on AIDS Competence
In 'Learning to Fly', Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell give a definition of Knowledge assets around 3 important ideas:
1. Distillation
We are not collecting together everything, if we can distill it, then the knowledge becomes more accessible. We are trying to find within our experiences some General Principles, and link them to further detail.
2. Hierarchy
The Knowledge Asset is structured so that users can delve into an ever increasing level of detail. So Principles are illuminated through summaries of stories, that lead to detailed stories that lead to...
3. People
Knowledge Assets will always link to people. If we want to learn more about an experience, we can contact this person for more information.
4. Owned by a community
Knowledge Assets need to be owned by a community.
In the Constellation’s work with Knowledge Assets, we have adapted the ideas in Learning to Fly to our way of working. For instance, the Constellation comes together around a social networking site at http://aidscompetence.ning.com. The Knowledge Assets will be linked as tightly as we can to the site, the stories will be held on the site and the links to people will be made through the site.
Here are 2 other principles that we have developed or added:
5. Principles for Action
We call the General Principles or Guidelines, Principles for Action. So in the stories that we tell, our learning states the possibility of action to change a situation. We can always frame our learning with a sentence of the form, “If you do this, then that will happen.
6. Dynamic
Our Knowledge Assets will be dynamic. As we have new experiences, we will incorporate what we have learned into the Knowledge Asset.
