What makes a good “locally led” funder?

Arab Women’s Stories of Economic Survival

Picture a woman confined to her home due to occupation; a mother carving out time from her caregiving duties to pursue education; a daughter enduring violence at home, and yet deciding to share her story; a woman dictating research notes from her hospital bed with a baby in her arms.

This booklet is intended as a tool to amplify the diverse voices of young women across Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Tunisia facing Economic Gender Based Violence (EGBV). Here, we transmit the findings of a 9-month-long Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) involving 18 local co-researchers (CRs) and engaging 85+ women in workshops and semi-structured interviews.

As part of this research, we discovered what EGBV meant for the women involved. We accompanied co-researchers and research participants by creating a space for them to share their experiences. Hearing the stories you will read here was heartbreaking, moving, and confronting to us – we hope they will act as a wake-up call to consider the vast implications of EGBV and advocate for urgent systemic action.

The Development Alternative is a consortium co-designing alternative ways to do development that are truly led by young people. Recrear has partnered with INTRAC and The Development Alternative for two years, conducting research on youth civil society, the impact of youth organisations, groups and movements, their innovation and the enabling and limiting factors affecting their work. The research informed programme designs and the publication of a report: Towards A Thriving, Credible, And Sustainable Youth Civil Society, Evidence and research into the status of southern-based youth civil society – forging a vision for the future.

What Happens If We Meet? explores how young people experience shrinking civic space and the role INGOs can play as their partners. The ‘Playbook’ reflects on the realities of youth civic space and invites the reader to join the reflection through a series of exercises. The Playbook brings together the findings generated throughout a four-month Learning Journey between Oxfam staff, 15 youth organizers from Palestine, Uganda and Pakistan and the Recrear team. Together we explored the question: How do young activists experience civic space and how can INGOs better support them in shrinking civic spaces? In response to this question, participants shared many personal stories. Their lived experiences give an insight into the different ways youth-led groups challenge and reinvent their participation in civic space.

We collaborated with FRIDA, The Young Feminist Fund, to run participatory research on how their support has impacted young feminist groups around the world. We visited 5 grantee partners across different regions where FRIDA provides support. Based on this research, we co-published ‘The Young Feminist Pluriverse’ - a narrative report (forthcoming).

Recrear collaborated with Oxfam to run Participatory Action Research on how young women of colour in Southern Africa exercise their agency, organize effectively and express dissent. We trained 5 country teams made up of young activists and Oxfam staff from across Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The research created the foundation for Oxfam’s first youth strategy in the Southern Africa region.

We partnered with CIVICUS to carry out a landscape and trend analysis on resourcing youth-led groups and movement. The research ended with the creation of a Playbook that features 7 stories of young activists around the world accompanied by reflective exercises for donors and youth organizers.

We brought together 12 global youth co-researchers to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on youth civil society around the world, and identify the kind of resourcing and support needed to strengthen the youth response and recovery. By observing how youth civil society organisations respond to the crisis, we learnt how our generation can cope through rapid disruption and what new strategies for adaptation, resilience and change are emerging.