When we began the Value Chain Partnerships project in 2002, we had not heard of the term communities of practice. All of our groups were called working groups. In 2006 we began our work with the Wallace Center for Sustainable Agriculture and were introduced to the terms communities of practice and knowledge management. The communities of practice definition seemed to fit well with the way we were running our working groups, but we continued to call them working groups to avoid confusing our participants. Within the Value Chain Partnerships team, we used the two terms working groups and communities of practice interchangeably.

In 2008 we hired Sue Honkamp to help us with branding and marketing Value Chain Partnerships. Sue helped us reflect on which term would be best to use in our branding message. After much discussion, we decided to stick with the descriptor "working group" rather than change the ending of each group’s name. That said, Value Chain Partnerships is a network of working groups that uses a communities of practice framework. Why is this framework so important? As communities of practice scholar Richard McDermott said in his article "Knowing in Community: 10 Critical Success Factors in Building Communities of Practice"*:

"Communities of practice present an odd irony. They have always been part of the informal structure of organizations. They are organic. They grow and thrive as their focus and dynamics engage community members. But to make them really valuable, inclusive and vibrant, they need to nurtured, cared for and legitimated. They need a very human touch."

And so it is with the working groups in Value Chain Partnerships. Each of our working groups is very different, shaped by the working group leader and participants’ skills and expertise, yet all of the groups function in a collaborative atmosphere where everyone is both learner and teacher.

* Richard McDermott, "Knowing in Community: 10 Critical Success Factors in Building Communities of Practice," IHRIM Journal, March 2000.