Throughout our research projects, we put a strong emphasis on a close exchange with local leaders, both those elected as well as traditional ones.
During our last project visit to Eastern Uganda in April ’17, Local Council Three of the Mpungwe sub-county emphasized how he appreciates the way L-IFT carries out its work and explained: “We welcome L-IFT’s research. It does not give hand-outs to people. Instead, L-IFT’s research builds the resilience of people, because they learn from the research. We appreciate the fact that L-IFT research is for a long period of time. So many researchers just come and are never seen again. We hope you will tell us the results of your findings.”
After completion of every research project, all findings are sent to the local leaders. Moreover, if the budget allows, L-IFT also presents and explains these findings in detail. Our hope is that those findings not only serve other organizations, such as Restless development Uganda, BRAC Uganda, Opportunity bank, and Bugadde sacco to design appropriate interventions but that also the leaders themselves can make use of these findings in their work.
By Anne Marie van Swinderen
Founder of L-IFT