How have you involved community stakeholders in formative research activities in your context? If you haven’t, how could you potentially involve them more meaningfully in the future?
In my previous employment, we involvement stakeholders in various ways which it was to put different categories such formal stakeholders that are registered, CBO , ordinary members of community, clinics, transport association, Africa diaspora community. As you may known that after South Africa democracy, South Africa saw an increase of people coming all over and mostly depending who is their contact, they arrive in an area called Hillbrow in Johannesburg. In doing formative research, we conducted focus group discussion with various groups and stakeholders who are already in CAG/, In depth interview (IDI) as part reinforcing generalised information gathered , also did the ethnography of mapping the area and this was done by temporarily employing community members from the area as recommended by stakeholders, and also trained youth and older people on photography to take pictures of their community and interpret it in their own understanding. Involving Africa diaspora association to understand issues affecting political, economic refuges and how we incorporate them in trials and development in general. This was helpful because in the process of employing more CLOs we had to look at French speaking, Shona , Ndebele etc. The desktop analysis done using the municipality facilities and this was helpful to get literature review and confirmation of statistics according to demography of the area etc.
