Contribution short abstract:

Inclusion of older people’s voices and their meaningful engagement in knowledge-generation, policymaking and civil society responses provides an opportunity to place rights-based approaches and downward accountability at the centre of the Decade of Healthy Ageing.

Contribution long abstract:

The UN Decade of Healthy Ageing 2021-2030 provides new opportunities for strengthening the inclusion, visibility and agency of older people, amplifying their voices, centring their meaningful engagement and emphasizing co-created solutions and bottom-up accountability. It also offers new ways to explore health and well being for both current and future generations while reflecting on the Anthropocene, on Nature, on decolonization and on different forms of knowledge and world views.

In this paper, we present how Participatory Video (PV) has been used to assess its feasibility to support small groups of older people in three different country contexts to amplify their voices and catalyse conversations between stakeholders at different levels. Older people made videos crafted around ‘healthy ageing’ and discussing their recommendations for state and non-state actors in local, national and international events.

In Togo, older people from rural and peri-urban contexts in Kpalimé reflected on intergenerational and livelihood tensions as well as access to public services and social activities. In Canada, indigenous older people on Manitoulin Island presented their perspectives on the importance of human as well as non-human connections and their broader historical context. In Jordan, older people from an urban mixed context in Amman, where refugee, displaced and host communities live side by side, highlighted challenges in their urban environment and how ageism affects them.

We reflect on if and how this pilot PV methodology intervention can support decolonizing processes and citizen-led design of ecologically-focused solutions for fostering healthy ageing as a key enabler throughout the Decade.

Contribution short abstract:

This presentation demonstrates how women beneficiaries of craft workshops in Cairo embody a decolonial notion of empowerment as compared to the literature, thus how women's voices transcend and complicate assumed binary oppositions between Sardenberg’s theorisation of liberal/liberating empowerment

Contribution long abstract:

This presentation is based on ongoing research being conducted as part of the author’s PhD studies at the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex). The research seeks to explore the perceptions of empowerment among both women beneficiaries of handicraft-based Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) programmes that are funded by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and their differences between those of the NGO staff working on these programmes. The qualitative research took place in 2022 across three of the poorest neighborhoods in Cairo, utilising a case study approach where one NGO and its related WEE programme was analysed. The presentation presents how the women beneficiaries embody and perceive a decolonial and different notion of empowerment as compared to what is said in the literature and thus how women's voices transcend and complicate assumed binary oppositions between Sardenberg’s theorisation of liberal and liberating empowerment.

Through Sardenberg’s theorisation of empowerment, earning income through craft-based workshops is a form liberal empowerment – where power is taken out of the equation - however preliminary results from the women beneficiaries in this study provide decolonial notions of empowerment, where the women themselves feel they are empowered in Sardenberg’s liberating sense - where power is very much at the centre of their empowerment. Therefore, in its analysis of power, empowerment literature still lacks decoloniality and is limited in its scope. The presentation ends with recommendations on ways to enable decoloniality through viable alternative theorisations of empowerment for future practice of WEE programmes.

Contribution short abstract:

In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, feminist activists and researchers often identify 3 main causes of their sufferings: (1) the Israeli occupation, (2) patriarchy, and (3) the NGO system. I'l explore the tal'3at movement, a feminist, decolonial, critical movement that started in September 2019

Contribution long abstract:

While conducting fieldwork in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and Palestinian refugee camps inside them, Palestinian feminist activists and researchers would often identify the main causes of their sufferings as a three-headed Cerberus: (1) the Israeli occupation, (2) patriarchy, and (3) the NGO system. Those oppressions are intertwined turning life for Palestinians (and more so for Palestinian women) almost unbearable.

After the Oslo Accords, the OPT became more and more dependent on external aid, usually delivered through different ramifications of International Cooperation. The NGOification of Palestine has been described and denounced by Palestinian activists and scholars as an imposed restructuring of women’s activism through a Western agenda lens, its main consequence being the continuous shrinking of Palestinian civil society.

This paper draws from ethnographic and netographic research conducted in the OPT from September 2019 to May 2022, following the surge and development of the movement Tal’3at: a feminist, anti-colonial, political movement that achieved mobilizations and repercussions all through the WANA region’s main cities and Palestinian refugee camps. The movement was born in September 2019 in response to a gender-based violence murder and pushed over hundreds of women to the streets to chant against patriarchy while centering Palestinian liberation and questioning the NGOs and researchers role and positionality in the struggle.

The main objective is understanding and learning from the Tala’3at experience focusing on the anticolonial feminist critique of the International Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid system, holding a candle to its methodological and theoretical proposals, achievements, and shortcomings.

Contribution short abstract:

We discuss how we promoted a decolonial research praxis among a team of Bolivian indigenous youth co-investigators and UK academics. We also share scenes from a docufiction film co-produced with indigenous youths to highlight how participatory video-making can generate counterhegemonic narratives.

Contribution long abstract:

As part of this horizontal exchange, we will share insights from a collaborative research project that foregrounds dreams and visions of indigenous youth in the Bolivian city of El Alto. We will discuss some of the tactics we used to promote a more decolonial research praxis within our team of Bolivian indigenous youth co-investigators and UK-based non-indigenous academics. We call for managing power relations through mixed forms of engagement. We also emphasise the need to consider (1) flexibility and process-oriented methodological approaches within grant applications and research project governance as this can set the basis for more experimental, shared, and horizontal knowledge co-production in subsequent stages, (2) internal work procedures that prioritise a situated construction of mutuality, and (3) shifting resources to collaborators based within the physical setting in which the research takes place. We will then reflect on the potential of participatory video-making – a method grounded in traditions of popular education, docu-fiction, and visual anthropology – in capturing the priorities of historically marginalised groups. Drawing on scenes from a docufiction film co-produced with our collaborators in El Alto, we demonstrate how indigenous youths enacted their problems and visions by deploying a particular urban Aymara film-making aesthetic that combines insights from indigenous and modern urban worlds without ever fully mixing them. By sharing and discussing some short film scenes, we demonstrate under what conditions and how participatory video-making can generate counterhegemonic narratives that challenge urban coloniality.

Contribution short abstract:

Findings show that facilitation by local NGOs and CBOs, capacity building, funding and financial management, needs identification, and context mapping underpinned by a direct interface learning approach are effective ways to support women and youth-led local community-based groups and organisations.

Contribution long abstract:

How can international donors and agencies build effective local-international partnership through providing effective direct support to women and youth-led local community-based groups and organisations on peace-building and development? How do these community-based groups and organisations respond to the political dynamics and influences of adapting global knowledge in ways that enables them to contribute to peace in their local communities is not fully understood? This research study aimed to develop evidence on the aforementioned issues by assessing the European Union Micro Project Programme (EU-MPP) implemented from 2001 to 2012 in local communities of the Niger-Delta region of Nigeria using a convergent parallel mixed-method case study approach. Findings indicate that facilitation by local NGOs and CBOs, technical capacity building, funding and financial management, identification and understanding of needs, capacity building and mapping local context underpinned by a direct interface learning approach are effective ways to support women and youth-led local community-based groups and organisations. An effective local-international partnership for peace-building is underpinned by this direct interface learning approach which encompasses; participation, involves knowledge exchange, negotiation, good governance, trust, sense of belonging, social values, community-led methodology, consultation and consensus. However adapting global or universal knowledge by local community-based groups and organisations is influenced by local culture and world views held overtime by local communities. This implies utilisation, sensitivity and a co-learning approach by international donors and agencies to local community assets and structures for successful contribution to local peacebuilding and development.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper will discuss research co-production experiences in the Informal Settlements Domain of the African Cities Research Consortium, reflecting on the process of involving local leaders and the community at large through a decolonial lens.

Contribution long abstract:

The Informal Settlements Domain of the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) has been trying to create more equitable partnerships between professionals, academia, and the community in Harare, Zimbabwe. Through the community knowledge agenda, the research has managed to involve community members in the research process through including them in the research team so that they are not only answering questions but also asking the questions. The community was involved in tool development, and defining research objectives. After data collection, the community presented findings in stakeholder engagement meetings. They participated in the analysis of findings about their own communities and formulation of priority complex problems (PCPs).

This process has changed the way the community values research. When they are only respondents, they get tired of answering questions and do not see the tangible contribution of research towards solving their problems. Trying to engage them is not a smooth process as local community politics are at play. There are still expectations that some benefits will come after research. The process also needs time as it includes translation of documents to local language to ensure full participation and understanding of the research. however, when the community and academia work together through a decolonial lens to conduct research, there are more benefits than drawbacks.

Contribution short abstract:

ACRC and ARISE were formulated in the UK, aligned with FCDO's agenda for the global south. As such, biases stemming from colonial tendencies are a possibility. However, both programmes recognise the importance of co-production of knowledge with local actors as it strengthens community voices.

Contribution long abstract:

The uptake designs of ACRC and ARISE, are meant to challenge the existential and prevalent inequalities reinforced by questionable governance infrastructure of cities, so that those undemocratic complex systems can be addressed to re-establish inclusive city governance for equitable resource distribution. Therefore, the conversation around decolonisation, should also accommodate uptake design that should address the interest of state institution like FCDO and not just the assumed asymmetrical power relations between the research institutions of the global north and global south.

The direct involvement of community actors in research and practice, has its own fair share of compounding challenges, notably, the medium of communication is a challenge, that is, trying to communicate linking academic and community vocabularies. Community and academic knowledge are quite different. Despite the challenge of the medium of communication, it is but needful to maintain this procedure as it may lay a sustainable foundation for local empowerment and transformation. As such, the premise of this discussion shouldn't only be anchored on the residue or legacy of colonial past, but should equally look at the new global agenda and its effect on the relationship between global north and global south.

Lessons learned include:

• It is an empowering model for local actors to speak to power

• It minimises the tendency for state actors to question the biases of research outcomes because of the involvement of local researchers

• It eases the effort of interpretation and dissemination of outcomes at community levels - which is empowering for community advocacy