BOOK PRESENTATION ‘Sailing below the waves’
24/11 - 30/11/2023

Are we doing development support differently?

  • Date: 24 November 2023 14:00 – 16:30 CET
  • Venue: ITM – Campus Rochus – Aula Janssens
  • Location: Sint-Rochusstraat, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium

‘Sailing below the waves’ covers a 20-year journey of a local health systems strengthening programme in 2000 villages in West Bengal and Sikkim (eastern India). The programme focuses on community resilience and engagement of local civil society, and the use of innovative methodologies (including the use of drawings).

The book is an ITM Antwerp publication and has been written by a mix of Indian and Belgian health professionals concerned by the programme. Karel Gyselinck, Abhijit Das, Biswanath Basu and Aloysius James are the main authors, with several staff members of Memisa and ITM as co-authors. The book will be presented by the Indian team (Biswanath Basu, Ketaki Das, Aloysius James of the West-Bengal Voluntary Health Association) and Karel Gyselinck (Enabel, Memisa).

We invite you to the book launch which will be a participatory session. Some challenging questions will be thrown at the audience. How to put people’s needs, autonomy and rights at the centre of development? How to deal with complex environments? Is innovation the same as learning? How to move towards sustainable change ? Are we recolonising development?

Register here.