In celebration of its five-year anniversary, the HRP Alliance recently hosted two events to facilitate dialogue between implementers, beneficiaries and coordinators about the core work of the HRP Alliance: research strengthening capacity.
The first event, held on 15 February 2023, was a celebration of the end of the HRP Alliance's Mentorship Programme involving current and past participants. To date, 56 unique individuals have benefitted from the programme: 13 mentor-mentee pairs in 2020-2021 and 17 mentor-19 mentee pairs in 2022. The programme pairs early career women researchers from low- and middle-income countries with more senior researchers as mentors.
"The programme has (...) sensitized me on critical thinking skills, communication strategy and how to package information depending on who you are communicating to," Hellen Shida, a mentee from Kenya.
"I did not know that this mentorship program would make this change and transformation in my work, and it also gave me strength and motivation," Dr Ishraq Rabai Ahmed Alsubaee, a mentee from Yemen.
HRP Alliance's second event was a webinar held on 16 February 2023 to take stock of its achievements since initiating activities in 2017. The keynote address was given by Dr Catherine Kyobutungi, Executive Director for the African Population and Health Research Center, Kenya, which is one of the HRP Alliance research capacity strengthening hubs. A number of speakers from institutions directly impacted by the work of the HRP Alliance brought their perspectives on subjects of equality, equity and "decolonization" as well as exploring avenues for future sexual and reproductive health and rights research capacity strengthening.
Dr Kyobutungi proposed that we move from "capacity strengthening" to "capacity sharing" as a truer reflection of the two-way ecosystem in which the HRP Alliance works.
"My journey with HRP Alliance is a very long one....In a meeting in 2013 many of the researchers there were discussing the way forward in terms of capacity strengthening for low and middle income countries. And that discussion resulted in my first co-authored research paper" said Dr Adama Baguiya, an HRP Fellow (PhD candidate) and a medical researcher at the Institute for Research in Health Sciences in Burkina Faso, an HRP Alliance hub.
One of the panelists, Dr Princess Ruhama Acheampong, a lecturer at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, who participated in the Mentorship Programme in 2021 as a mentee and in 2022 as a mentor, summarized what she believed were the main characteristics of an excellent mentor using three words: commitment, communication, and consistency.
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Presentations
Celebrating HRP Alliance: Taking stock of the past, learning for the future.
From Capacity Strengthening to Capacity Sharing?
More about the HPR Alliance and its work on research capacity strengthening
