For decades, research about marginalised communities was done at a distance — about people, rarely with them. The findings rarely made it back to the communities they described.
In Bulawayo, a different model is taking shape. Community members are trained as co-researchers: they design the questions, gather the data, and interpret what it means alongside academic partners.
"When the people closest to the issue hold the pen, the evidence changes," one co-researcher told us. "And when the evidence changes, the policy conversation changes with it."
The early results are already informing provincial health and education planning — proof that evidence rooted in lived experience is not softer than traditional data. It is sharper.