Policy Advocacy

Research Validation & Policy Dialogue

Research about a community that is never shown to that community is not evidence. It is an assumption with a chart attached.

Policy AdvocacyCompleted Tamale With Partners

The Challenge

The challenge

A great deal is written about rural Northern Ghana. Very little of it comes back to the villages it was written about, and less still reaches the district assemblies deciding where money goes.

The result is a gap in both directions. Communities cannot correct a record they never see, and decision-makers work from evidence that no one on the ground has ever confirmed. Priorities that are obvious in a village, particularly the ones women raise, drop out somewhere between the field notebook and the budget line.

A facilitator presenting research findings on a projector screen to seated community members

Our Response

What we did

We built two steps into the research that are usually left out: going back, and going up.

Validation workshops where findings are presented back to the communities that produced them
Open correction, so residents can dispute, qualify or add to what was recorded
Deliberate space for women's priorities, which are the most often lost in summary
District stakeholder dialogue bringing residents, assemblies and agencies into the same room
Evidence packaged for the people who actually allocate resources

The Difference

What changed

Findings that have been argued over in the community they describe carry a weight that a consultant's report does not.

Evidence communities stand behind

Residents confirmed, corrected and prioritised the findings before they went anywhere near a district meeting.

A direct line to decision-makers

District dialogue put community representatives in front of the people who allocate resources.

Women's priorities kept on the record

Issues that commonly disappear in summary survived all the way to the dialogue table.

Accountability that runs both ways

Communities saw what was said on their behalf, and could hold us to it.

Why It Matters

Why it matters

Decentralisation only delivers if local priorities actually reach local decisions. Validation is the unglamorous mechanism that makes the difference between consultation and being heard.