Who We Are
What We Do
Where We Work
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 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 ethnic minority 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 combine of the 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).
With the above background and objectives, The Grassroots Institute was established in Canada in 2018. TGI Canada has assisted forming The Grassroots Institute Western Balkans since 2020 when first Summer Field School on Mountain Ecosystems & Resource Management 2020 was to take place in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina. But, due to Covid emergencies, it was organized in online mode. Later from 2021, a network with academia, NGOs and municipalities has been evolved in the region.
In 2025, The Grassroots Institute Western Balkans was set up in Montenegro with the following details:
