Dropping Knowledge International is a global initiative to support the free and open sharing of knowledge among people of the world – born out of the unprecedented democratizing power of the Internet. At DKI, we use media tools, social process knowledge, and communication methods to inspire the public to see the world not as concrete but as clay. We connect people in hopes of making the world not about red and blue but about all of us. In the words of Poet Laureate Audre Lorde, we support the public to understand that “there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives.”  Founded in research on social values and strong principles, DKI begins by inviting us to question all that is in front of us, all that is before us, and all that is to come.

When people start asking questions they also start sharing what they know about the world. When people share their knowledge, they may find similar experiences or common solutions, just as they may also realize that there is not necessarily just one story but multiple stories to be negotiated.

This insight is not new, though it is rarely acted upon in an organized way, with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States being a notable exception. In the 1930s, Myles Horton, son of a Tennessee coal miner, set up a community center modeled after a Danish school called Highlander. Horton’s Highlander Folk School started out helping workers hit by the Depression and soon became a place where poor whites and blacks could gather and share their stories and knowledge. Like many such efforts to open up knowledge, especially across Jim Crow lines, trouble followed. Horton was arrested on the charge of “going to one side of the state and getting information and sharing it with people on the other side of the state.” Eventually, Highlander went far past the other side of the state of Tennessee. Activists from all around the country came there for workshops, training, and discussion, including Rosa Parks, long before she helped to spark the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.

If the transformational power of asking questions and sharing knowledge has not changed, the world in which this kind of activity might take place certainly has. With each dropping project and our Question to Action Method, we are creating a modern infrastructure for the Global public to ask questions, get information from one place and share it with people next door, across the street, in different neighborhoods, states, regions, and on the other side of the world. In short, From Vote to Voice will foster a nationwide exchange of viewpoints, ideas, and people-powered solutions. With this exchange, we aim to change the terms of political debate and engagement in the United States and elsewhere.

If you or your organization is interested in learning more about DKI and our tools, please contact us.