Advanced question and answering systems for community development

The Internet has made the transfer of knowledge of successful community development programs and processes possible by allowing practitioners to connect through computer-mediated-communications such as Web pages, email, chat rooms and groupware. However, because community development needs are specific to each community, it becomes difficult to design programs to solve the problem, despite the availability of funds, which is one of the problems of enduring poverty and distress. We propose that one of the ways to alleviate the burden of knowledge transfer among practitioners is to build a large repository of community development practices and practitioner knowledge using video or automated slide shows and an intelligent agent question/answering system to simulate a conversation between a practitioner seeking information and a practitioner sharing information. Such a system could provide the information seeking practitioner with the perception of dealing with one or more knowledgeable experts without having to actually interact, expediting the transfer of knowledge when the practitioner actually needs it.