This article examines the lessons from a collaborative project that worked with women agricultural leaders in Papua New Guinea. The project sought to build the capacity of these leaders as trainers in a way that would enable the development of a sustainable community of practice and worked within a critical and place-based pedagogy underpinned by asset-based community development principles. Whilst the process of our collaborative work has a number of salutary lessons, the co-construction of the training course with PNG women farmer leaders did illustrate a particular knowledge design continuum: that is, "surfacing" knowledge, "distilling" knowledge, "clarifying" knowledge and then "consolidating" knowledge. From this consolidated knowledge, together we were able to design locally valid and locally relevant modules. As the trainers went out to trial their training, they were then engaging in "sharing" knowledge and "reviewing" that knowledge which then lead to our collective ability to "improve" knowledge that will enhance future training in this area.