Breaking down barriers to data literacy for marginalised communities in Uganda
King Leticia (pronouns they/them)* , works for one of the leading and pioneer marginalised communities organisations in Uganda. Like many of their community members, they continue to shy away from research and data when designing projects. To them, there hasn’t been good data stewardship in their community which, in return, puts them at a disadvantage given the sensitivity of their lifestyle. It is very difficult to understand.
“We have worked with development partners who continue to make it hard for us to access funding or write rapid research. They develop methodologies with unclear instructions which either leaves us to think we are inferior or don’t know what we are doing.” King Leticia mentioned.
As a result, King Leticia and many marginalised community members end up not using data in project design and advocacy. This makes it difficult to design projects that can influence decision making and advocacy with policy makers.
In Uganda, many organisations that represent minoritised groups still lack the data skills necessary to conduct rapid research that could be used in agile decision-making. They are unable to effectively advocate for an inclusive, transformative, empowered society where programs are designed and implemented with a human rights focus. This has created gaps in the ability of these organisations to create methodologies that support rigorous research to inform decision-making through evidence based policies and hold policymakers accountable.
In consideration of this, Pollicy conceptualised a data literacy training with an objective of supporting consortium members under the Rapid Research for Agile Policymaking project, civil society organisations, and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) on how to use openly available data pertaining to their needs, simplify the use of publicly available information, and feed this data into evidence based policy making mechanisms.
Pollicy hopes that trainings like these, will in the long run equip Key Populations to conduct high-quality rapid research and use the results for policy analysis or decision-making, manage data effectively, extract and collect data from various sources, use tools such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets to manipulate, visualise and analyse data, and more.
“Government through agencies such as Uganda AIDS Commission, has done a good job putting in place documents such as the National Key Populations HIV/AIDS Multisectoral Programming Framework and the National Key Populations Size Estimates. But these continue to be contested because data collection and analysis wasn’t done by key populations since they don’t have these skills.” King Leticia explained.
These in person training sessions were ran twice a week starting from August 1st, 2022 to August 22nd, 2022.The participants that attended the physical training sessions were from various organizations including the consortium members implementing Rapid Research for Agile Policymaking project, and a select group of other organizations that advocate for sexual and gender minority issues such as Awesome Mind Speaks and Women of Uganda Network (WOGNET).
“I am so grateful that this training was full of capacity building and enhancement in regards to research skills and new knowledge. I was introduced to elements of research and writing policy briefs, things I did not have wide knowledge about, both from the facilitators and other participants.” Princess Jonathan Rihanna (Pronouns She/her)* another participant in the training mentioned.
Upon completing training, participants were able to competently write policy briefs as their capstone project, bringing the training to a tenable ending. All 15 participants mentioned they were satisfied with the training’s alignment with their expectations, the methods of presentation, the delivery of the training materials as well as the length of the sessions. The participants further mentioned that the program enhanced their research skills.
“When I started the workshop, I was really sceptical and not so sure about research, but over time I have learned that research actually applies to everything, and basic research skills should be a lifestyle when working on my tasks. I have learned to set a research question and collect data, but most importantly, I have learned to generally carry out both quantitative and qualitative research, as well as producing findings, tabulating results, and channelling the research to the objectives.” King Leticia mentioned.
Pollicy has gone ahead to record its training sessions which will be made available on its learning platform. The platform hosts other online training courses, including the Vote: Women Programme and the Digital Ambassadors Programme courses.
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This data literacy training was part of the Rapid Research for Agile Policymaking project supported through the Voice Innovative Grant Facility which is an initiative of and financed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The training was spearheaded by Gilbert Beyamba, the Director of Programs at Pollicy, facilitated by Shem Opolot, the Uganda Program Manager for Duke University’s Division of Global Neurosurgery and Neurology (DGNN) and Bonnita Nyamwire, who is the Research Manager at Pollicy.
*King Leticia and Princess Jonathan Rihanna are not real names. Real Identity of people quoted in this blog has been hidden at their own request.
Written by
Bonaventure Saturday (Research Assistant) and Ibrahim Waiswa Batambuze (Director of Communications) at Pollicy.
