The Guide has been developed to support activist and feminist civil society organizations in low and middle-income countries to navigate and build meaningful, long lasting collaborations with researchers and funders to undertake VAWG research.
It highlights the power dynamics within these partnerships and provides strategies to manage them. Raising Voices and SVRI recently launched the Guide in a webinar in partnership with the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) and Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAWKenya).
5 key messages from the webinar:
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Researcher-activist partnerships offer an opportunity to challenge and subvert traditional knowledge hierarchies to make it truly collaborative and for knowledge to be co-owned.
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In developing partnerships, give attention to the contexts, power relations and the different interests involved among partners.
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Trust is the currency of truly collaborative partnerships.
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Clear plans and methodologies (as well as intellectual property sharing) and budgets need to be agreed upon up front and these should be reviewed and reflected on throughout the process to ensure the partnership remains equitable.1
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Self-care of all involved is of paramount importance.
Read the Guide in English and Spanish. The webinar recording and presentations slides can be accessed here.
Meaningful, equitable research partnerships can expand the visibility of activist organizations’ work in new spaces and to new audiences in wider VAWG sector and provide researchers’ insight and skills in understanding and managing on the ground realities of programming. It is important that we share our experiences of partnerships, the lessons we learned in what worked and what did not work in partnerships.
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Raising Voices and the SVRI have co-developed a Guide for Feminist Practice in Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) Research Collaborations.
