AFEW International empowers youth in Uzbekistan through research!

AFEW International is organising a series of trainings on Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) in Uzbekistan in the framework of the program “Advocating vulnerable groups’ rights through a stronger civil society in Uzbekistan” to empower underserved groups in Uzbekistan.

CBPR is a partnership approach to research, based on the equal participation of community members, organisation representatives, and potential researchers in all research processes. It is a great evidence-based tool for developing new projects and activities involving people from the communities and empower them.

CBPR has proved to be an effective way of bringing together people from underserved communities around the assessment of their own living conditions through data collection. The CBPR approach strengthen participants capacity to engage in constructive dialogue at local and national levels to address issues related to the social rights of underserved populations, including youth.

On 22 September AFEW International conducted the first online training. 18 people from Tashkent, Tashkent region (Kibray), Samarkand, Fergana, Navoi, Surkhandarya, Khorezm attended the training and learnt about the CBPR approach in general, its ethical issues and the mechanism of conducting the research.  On 26 September participants continued the session and learnt about the methodology of the study and the key data collection tools.

On 4 October participants dived into the data analysis and at the final event on 11 October they will learn how to apply the research findings.

The result of these training sessions -  the research report on youth, empowerment and gender -  will be presented and disseminated in December 2023.

For reference

AFEW International, in partnership with ISHONCH VA HAYOT, and with financial support from the European Union, is implementing the programme “Advocating vulnerable groups’ rights through a stronger civil society in Uzbekistan”. The programme is dedicated to empowering underserved groups in Uzbekistan, such as people vulnerable to discrimination – women, people with disabilities, people living with or at high risk of HIV and migrants, and to protecting their rights and freedoms through strengthening and building local CSOs’ own organisations and capacities, thereby strengthening civil society in Uzbekistan. AFEW together with the EU delegation has decided to focus more on youth within the specific target groups mentioned to ensure that vulnerable young people in Uzbekistan have the necessary resources to take part in society.

The CBPR approach has already proved its effectiveness for the recently developed campaign “See What Matters”, created by the AFEW partnership in collaboration with organisations and communities of women living with HIV in the EECA region, in the scope of a project “Combating stigma to end HIV/AIDS in EECA”, financed by Gilead.  All the materials were made in close collaboration with local communities and based on the results of comprehensive community-based participatory research conducted in the EECA region, including Uzbekistan. The media campaign includes videos and images for online and offline usage and can be downloaded at the website stopstigma.hiv.