The Girl Research Unit – Rwanda’s expert SenseMakers®

Published by Tony Quinlan on

The other week I was out in Kigali, Rwanda again – looking at the frameworks and practicalities around the upcoming three-year programme working with young girls across the country. SenseMaker® will be a big part of the evaluation and we’ll be exploring how to use it for continuous monitoring at the same time.

But this post is about something slightly different. A year ago, my first visit to Kigali started with working with Jamal Khadar of 2CV and six young women who were forming the core of the Girl Reseach Unit (picture from last week below).

 

Last year, Jamal had just spent some time working on qualitative and quantitative research with them – and then we spent half a day on SenseMaker® and narrative research before they hit the field for the first time.  (Which was also the field debut of the SenseMaker® Collector for iPad app)

They’re naturals – the material they gather is fantastic, often taboo material that hasn’t emerged in standard research.

But last week I learnt something else – they’ve continued to develop their research skills since, working first with Jamal and then with Emily Julian at 2CV after Jamal returned to the UK.  They decided to aim to become fully certified/qualified/accredited by the Market Research Society and are currently preparing papers and projects for accreditation.

But – and this is the fantastic thing – they’ve already been singled out for their expertise.  In this year’s Market Research Society Awards in December 2013, the Girl Research Unit and 2CV were singled out for the President’s Medal:

MRS President’s Medal 

2CV and Girl Hub Rwanda funded by Nike Foundation and the UK Department for International Development

It’s a fabulous achievement – to both the girls’ ability and work and also to the 2CV team’s mentoring skills.  Kudos all round!