TGI Versity is an online education platform created and facilitated by The Grassroots Institute. The underlying thinking behind The Grassroots Institute (TGI) is to bridge the gaps between theoretical and discourse-based knowledge developed in academic institutions and the actual field milieu using or requiring that body of knowledge. Generally observed, there is mostly a unidirectional flow of knowledge from universities or research institutions to the rural/urban communities who are treated as recipient ends of development interventions. The Grassroots Institute envisages to bank for research, trainings, documentation, publication, participatory initiatives and discourses upon local and Indigenous knowledge systems and communities’ primary experiences and experiments. The documentation, publication, trainings and academic discourses can better help mainstream the grassroots knowledge sets, local innovations, local needs and local technologies in the contemporary research, teaching and extension agenda of academic institutions/platforms. Obviously, the academic institutions and research organizations need to be supported and oriented to the real and grassroots issues, strengths, dynamism and needs of the common people especially local & Indigenous communities. In order to realize this paradigm construct, all teachers and researchers in academic institutions should contribute to field implementation projects, and all field staff of practice-based organizations should teach or assist the students. This way, all teachers will become field practitioners too. They would have a combination of theoretical knowledge and practical insights at a time. The philosophy of the “grassroots” validates the same interface of ground reality with the rhetoric or theory. The Grassroots Institute promotes this philosophy. TGI Versity is mandated to contribute to realization of this philosophy and mission.
WHY CHOOSE TGI Versity Courses?
- Comprehensive solution for online education on natural resources
- Based on real needs of professionals and students
- Multiple content types (text, photos, videos, Live interactions)
- Youtube, Vimeo, and AWS integration
- Google calendar integration
- Online 1 to 1 meetings support
- Single & multiple instructors
- Organizational education system
- Partnerships and collaborations
- Multiple payment gateways
- Online payment
- English language
- Fully responsive
- Fully practical oriented
- Strong field inputs