Transforming Education Systems for Sustainable Development (TES4SD) Network Plus

Lead Research Organisation: University of Bristol
Department Name: Education

Abstract

The Transforming Education Systems for Sustainable Development (TES4SD) Network Plus will develop sustainable institutional capacity in India, South Africa, Rwanda and Somalia to produce high quality research that will assist key stakeholders in these countries and at a regional and global scale to better understand how education systems can be transformed to support sustainable development. Countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are facing unprecedented challenges in relation to sustainable development including poverty and inequality and managing the risks posed by climate change. The sustainable development goals (SDGs) represent a holistic response to these challenges. Education has enormous potential to act as a driver for sustainable development and the education SDG is centrally implicated in the realisation of all of the other SDGs. At present, however, education systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are some way off achieving the education SDG (goal 4). Our vision, consistent with global, regional and national agendas, is for systems of life-long learning that can provide learners with the skills, competencies, values and transformative agency required to meet the challenges of environmentally sustainable and socially just development. The 'wicked problem' that education systems face in realising this vision is how to simultaneously address the current learning crisis in LMICs whilst transforming education systems to become drivers of SD. This challenge needs to be addressed simultaneously across all sectors of the education and training system and at the global, regional, national and local scales. Led by a world leading team containing relevant interdisciplinary and practical expertise, the TES4SD will assist in addressing this problem. Specifically, we will build sustainable research capacity in partner countries to undertake relevant research including early career researchers based in academic and non-academic organisations. The team will synthesise existing and emerging evidence on how schools can be transformed to address the learning crisis and to make them drivers of SD; how can technical and vocational education and training can be transformed to facilitate the development of green skills and to support youth agency in the transition to sustainable, healthy, lifestyles and in revitalising peaceful and democratic societies; and, how higher education institutions can be transformed to support processes of social learning within civil society and amongst policy-makers to address sustainability challenges in cities and rural communities. Questions at the system level include in what ways is Target 4.7 which relates to education for sustainable development understood and implemented and we will develop contextually relevant indicators to monitor progress towards SDG 4.7 at local, national and global levels. The TES4SD network plus will also commission new research based on knowledge co-production techniques to develop evidence and arguments urgently needed to transform education and training systems. Research questions will primarily focus on the sometimes-contradictory relationship between SDG4 and decent work and economic growth (SDG8); sustainable cities and communities (SDG11); responsible production and consumption (SDG12); and, climate action (SDG13). Strategies for developing impact will be embedded in TES4SD activities from inception including the active involvement of beneficiary groups including policy-makers, NGOs and CBOs in network plus research and capacity building activities; and, the strategic targeting of outputs including national and network wide synthesis reports, policy briefs, MOOCs, toolkits to support research capacity, teaching and learning materials for use in formal and informal settings. Dissemination of evidence to beneficiary groups will be facilitated by the creative use of social and other media and supported by a dedicated website.

Planned Impact

TE4SD will synthesise and co-produce knowledge to transform education systems and therefore support sustainable, socially and environmentally just development, across the four hub nations and beyond. Non-academic beneficiaries include networks, organisations and individuals responsible for the shaping, delivery and regulation of: 1. Formal education; 2. TVET; 3. Higher education, and TES4SD focus SDGs. As highlighted in the case for support, some beneficiaries are already well known to members of TES4SD, e.g. as existing collaborators, or as fellow members of networks that TES4SD will tap into and extend, for mutual benefit.
Policy Makers/Influencers are an important and diverse beneficiary group, including: 1. Regional Policy fora/networks, such as: the African Union's Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), a forum for policy dialogue on education policies and a partnership between African education and training ministries in Africa and their technical and funding partners; the Southern African Development Community (SADC) including initiatives in the area of curriculum and teacher education; UNESCO including regional offices in India, Southern and East Africa and the UNESCO funded Mahatma Ghandi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development; 2. National Government bodies, responsible for policy areas relevant to TES4SD contexts of formal schooling, TVET and HE and focus SDGs; for example, in Rwanda, the Ministry of Education and the Rwandan Education Board; and the Workforce Development Authority; 3. Diverse Local Government bodies, tackling and implementing relevant policy agendas.
Funders/Donors involved in projects and initiatives relevant to TES4SD's agendas, contexts and SDGs including : UNESCO, DFID, the British Council, World Bank, Global Partnership for Education
Private and Public Sector Education providers and practitioners (linked to the formal education sector), including Schools, TVET providers, HEIs, where beneficiaries will include: Senior Management; teaching staff; other professional services staff.
Practitioners operating within informal education settings such as communities and workplaces; social learning is collaborative and relational. Forms of learning benefit from diversity and take place in diverse contexts.
NGOs/NGO networks associated with ESD agendas will be potential beneficiaries, e.g: SomaliREN (a not for profit network including the major Somali HEIs) which promotes research and quality HE among Somalis; the Somalia NGO Consortium, providing links to multiple organisations covering a wide range of agendas and relevant to multiple SDGs.
Members of the community, in particular those most likely to have links to education and other linked systems, e.g. 'youth' and their broader networks; traditional authorities.
An emphasis on co-production will ensure that relevant stakeholders are engaged at all stages of the research cycle from inception and design to dissemination and legacy planning, as well as building capacity for future research and impact work amongst the broader beneficiary communities (see Pathways).
Outputs from commissioned projects and synthesised knowledge will include policy briefs (project-level and national case study level syntheses), practice guides and toolkits. Working with advisers including Mediae and the Mahatma Ghandi Institute, our communications plan will employ multiple media forms and will be sensitive to technological capacity, cultural and geographical contexts and different end user group needs to maximise impacts on policy and practice.
In the longer term, we envisage that findings will be built into broader programmes of work, such as teacher training programmes and local development plans, for instance as a consequence of plus project impact activities; as a downstream legacy of TES4SD training; and through the uptake of national syntheses of findings by agenda setting fora.
 
Description Background

The Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures (TESF) network plus was funded by the UK government's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and involved partners from India, Rwanda, Somalia/Somaliland, South Africa, the Netherlands and the UK. The network was initiated in 2019 and officially ended as a funded initiative in October 2023. The purpose of TESF was to provide a better understanding of how education can be transformed to support sustainable livelihoods, sustainable cities and communities and climate action. Aligned with these concerns in the contexts of India, Rwanda, Somalia/ Somaliland, and South Africa, a focus of the network was to tackle intersecting inequalities, including those based on gender, socioeconomic status, race, class, languages, coloniality, and Indigeneity. Overall, the network funded 67 projects across the four countries of research focus. Researchers within the network sought to synthesise emerging findings and to generate learning from across the funded projects and the diversity of global South contexts.

Underpinning our approach was a methodological commitment to knowledge co-creation. There are many, sometimes conflicting meanings of knowledge co-creation in the wider literature. Our understanding of knowledge co-creation has evolved over time and reflects the plurality of approaches adopted by TESF research teams operating across diverse contexts and with contrasting objectives. We offered a basic definition of knowledge co-production or co-creation in our background paper, Co-Creating Education for Sustainable Futures (Sprague et al, 2021) as a reference and guide for potential TESF projects teams. At its most basic level, we understand 'knowledge co-creation' as research that is undertaken in equal partnership between academic researchers and other stakeholders including those who may potentially benefit from the research, have a deep understanding of the context of research and/or who may have a role in putting the findings of the research into practice (Sprague et al. 2021, 2).

Findings related to each of the projects funded by the network plus can be accessed from our web pages and from the country and network synthesis reports. Here we provide a summary of findings in relation to each of the main research themes namely education and sustainable cities and communities; education for sustainable livelihoods; and, education for climate action. We also summarise our findings relating to our use of knowledge co-creation as our methodological approach.


Transforming Education for Sustainable Livelihoods and Decent Work

Across the TESF Network, several projects were focused on Education for Sustainable Livelihoods, which emphasised vocational preparation for decent, sustainable work. This approach integrated community education and social learning with formal education, technical and vocational education and training (TVET), and additional training. The projects revealed that vocational education and training are often marginalized and deemed inferior to formal education. Moreover, they are frequently out of reach for socially excluded communities who require the skills and training to transition to sustainable livelihoods.

Learning environments are critically important for inclusivity. These include spaces such as community centres, gardens, digital platforms, kitchens, and notably, settings under a tree. A common theme across all projects was the acknowledgment of barriers to economic participation and the importance of fostering a consciousness for sustainability through education. Participants in these studies included individuals from underserved populations, the vulnerable, and those facing economic hardships. The projects aimed to amplify their voices.

There are numerous barriers to economic participation for marginalised individuals, and vocational education itself is an often-marginalised subject. The projects found that supporting skills for employability necessitates paying careful attention to the lived experiences of the individuals involved. Multiple initiatives aimed to develop employability skills for historically disadvantaged groups, leading to insights for transformative education that can foster sustainable livelihoods.

For example, a Rwandan project delved into the lived experiences of Rwandan girls and women who were neither employed nor engaged in education or training, while another project addressed skills development for work readiness and youth employability. Although both projects evaluated skills for employability, they concluded that the training available to Rwandan youth was insufficient for securing "decent work." However, the solutions proposed varied according to the unique experiences of the groups involved. To devise strategies that empower young people, including young women, it is essential to comprehend their lived experiences and tailor educational interventions to empower them individually and enable them to attain sustainable livelihoods. Likewise, a project in India investigated the transition of students in small towns between education and employment, examining the meaning of being educated in a rapidly developing small town, and the experiences of marginalized communities therein.

Sustainable livelihood education must also consider life skills that supplement the technical skills related to specific fields of work. For instance, a South African project focused on creating a framework for collective, community-level economic solutions in Makhanda. It explored ways in which local actors could collaborate to cultivate ecologically and socially responsible economic autonomy among the youth, with the goal of improving sustainable livelihoods and bolstering household income security. This process involved numerous initiatives, including fostering local agency for change and enhancing the confidence of young people to hold local institutions accountable and express themselves.

In a similar vein, young women in Rwanda who belonged to a cooperative that specialized in weaving and home decor were equipped with digital and entrepreneurial skills to enhance their income and expand their livelihoods. The research concluded that building economic agency is a collective social endeavor, not merely an individual pursuit, affecting how enterprise education and entrepreneurship education programs are structured.

Regarding Education and Indigenous Livelihoods, several projects investigated the exclusion of indigenous communities from educational opportunities and how mainstream approaches marginalise vocational learning. For example, research conducted in India examined the educational constructs concerning the education of Adivasis. The study, which involved school children and adult learners, highlighted how Adivasi communities often feel alienated by mainstream education, which does not cater to their diverse needs and goals. The researchers identified the need to establish learning sites that extend beyond the conventional classroom to encompass the Adivasi worldview. This perspective sees education as a means for youth to successfully navigate both the modern world and their traditional environments. The study recommended creating channels for learning that bridge academic and traditional Adivasi knowledge, thereby strengthening intergenerational ties and fostering leadership skills among the youth. Moreover, in the Horn of Africa, projects co-created numeracy and literacy content on climate action that incorporated indigenous and community knowledge. Another project supported minority groups in enhancing their livelihoods; for instance, using numeracy skills to help minority workers and informal traders establish lending programs and improve access to finance.

Transforming Education for Sustainable Cities and Communities

The pressing challenges of rapid urbanisation and rural neglect necessitate transformative education to build sustainable cities and communities. Urban growth has led to the transformation of semi-urban regions into urban areas, while rural locales suffer from depopulation, particularly as the youth migrate to cities. This results in an array of urban challenges, including insufficient arable land, high living expenses, poor housing, water and food scarcity, waste management issues, and a lack of skills needed for urban living. Marginalized communities face disparities in accessing essential services, leading to environmental health risks and violations of human rights.

The Transformative Education for Sustainable Futures (TESF) Network's initiatives focus on reimagining education to endow urban inhabitants with the skills, knowledge, and competencies to confront and alleviate these challenges. Their research advocates for inclusive education that incorporates not just community members but also politicians, planners, and leaders, both in urban settings and within rural traditions.

A pivotal finding across TESF Network's projects is the importance of trust and empathy in creating shared knowledge, with education programs that actively engage in problem-solving relevant to those directly impacted by urban and rural challenges. This approach has been shown to be effective across various contexts. For instance, in India, projects explored education from the perspective of marginalised city dwellers, and in Rwanda, community development and financial literacy were enhanced. In South Africa, efforts were made to improve food and water security, while projects in the Horn of Africa focused on enabling the deaf community to develop work capabilities.

TESF Network projects contend that education should not only address immediate urban challenges but also be intertwined with the broader systems and structures within which people live. This includes fostering an integrated approach to city planning, design, and education, with a focus on various issues ranging from congestion to literacy, water justice, food security, and housing conditions.

Another aspect highlighted by TESF projects is the significance of using indigenous languages and democratising learning spaces, which bolsters the transformative effect of education. For example, local languages were incorporated into food gardens in South Africa and Rwanda, and in educational materials like financial literacy booklets. Such approaches help to contextualise education and make it more relatable to the students' daily experiences.

Artistic and cultural expressions, including poetry, photography, storytelling, and drama, are identified as powerful tools for stimulating engagement and dialogue in both urban and rural educational contexts. In India, cross-disciplinary thinking was applied to the social aspects of water, while in South Africa, 'geostories' captured through citizen science projects highlighted the need for creating safe, expressive spaces.

Overall, the TESF Network advocates for education that is not only informative but also transformative, equipping individuals with the capacity to cultivate more sustainable urban and rural communities. This education must be rooted in local contexts, languages, and resources, engaging with the real-life challenges of urban dwellers and fostering a sense of co-ownership and active participation in developing sustainable solutions.

Transforming Education for Climate action

Research co-created within the TESF Network underscores that environmental degradation and climate change are immediate realities, not distant problems. They directly affect the most marginalized communities by impacting their livelihoods, ways of life, and futures. Unsustainable development patterns cause environmental degradation and pollution, detrimentally affecting people's health, livelihoods, and quality of life. These factors also affect ecosystems, biodiversity, and food and water systems. Current laws and governance structures are inadequate in curbing environmental degradation. Centralised methods are failing to promote sustainability at the local level, influencing improved livelihoods, food and water security, climate action, and the well-being of people and the planet. Education systems have been too slow in responding, and transformative education is required to strengthen citizen engagement and action for environmental and climate justice.

Education that is formal, non-formal, and informal, carried out in schools, community programs, universities, and through Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVETs), is essential for collaboratively and participatorily co-creating environment and climate change justice. For example, Rwanda's 'One Child One Tree' program connected communities and schools in climate action by creating 'children's forests' that promoted social harmony and addressed climate change. In South Africa, museums, universities, and schools collaborated with social movements to redefine sustainability education. In Somalia, a TVET program improved basic local services, enhancing sustainable development, while an eco-school project tackled water, health, and climate change challenges in educational settings. Rwandan eco-school projects incorporated climate change and sustainable development into the competency-based curriculum, and farmers with decades of experience in handling climate variability shared their knowledge to improve the community's adaptive capacity. Projects in India paid special attention to listening to marginalised voices, including children's, leading to new insights about the environment, climate change, citizenship, and intergenerational inequality.

Education should be multi-modal, embrace plurality, and operate across disciplines. Climate and Environmental Justice education should not be confined to climate science; it needs to be grounded in local contexts, addressing people's concerns, and led by ethics. It should be integral to all curricula and learning programs and include Indigenous knowledge and critical, creative practices that promote actionable knowledge and agency for transformative, sustainable futures. For instance, in South Africa, the 'Lore of the Land' photography project explored unrecognized relations to land, reshaping modernist and colonial law curricula. Cape Town residents conducted community water mapping to bolster water activism and assert their water rights. In India, multi-modal and interdisciplinary education occurred in 'water classrooms' and at a Carbon Summer School. Eco-schools programs in India modelled holistic educational practices that democratised decision-making. School gardens and water education across India, South Africa, Rwanda, and Somalia provided opportunities to explore ecology, sustainability principles, and community solidarity in integrated ways.

Active, transformative, and experiential learning approaches are essential. These methods contribute to agency for transforming the unsustainable status quo, tackle immediate issues like early warning systems for droughts and floods, and support the co-creation of alternatives in critical and inclusive ways. Throughout South Africa, India, Rwanda, and Somalia, school and community gardens have been developed, strengthening the agency of teachers, students, school leaders, and community members to advance food security and drought resilience. In South Africa, communities challenged power structures and decisions regarding mining and water management that affected their lives without their participation. In Somalia, schools and communities collaborated using action learning and indigenous methods. In Rwanda, positive outcomes were observed when school garden initiatives were extended to include home food gardens. These examples underscore the importance of basing quality education on children's real-life experiences, linking their knowledge of the world and the environment with new knowledge and experiences.

Education should be systemically minded, expansive, and regenerative, incorporating a broad range of practices, knowledges, languages (including Indigenous knowledge and languages), and supporting systemic strategies for mitigating climate change, building resilience, and creating regenerative alternatives for a sustainable future. For example, in South Africa, youth engaged in a translanguaging project to develop indigenous vocabularies in response to climate challenges. Coastal communities conducted empathetic community building and solidarity-based activism to counteract livelihood degradation due to mining. An educational project in Rwanda supported building resilience against climate hazards. In Somalia, the relevance of a circular economy was explored, and educational materials in local languages enhanced climate education in schools. In Rwanda, the use of Kinyarwanda empowered teachers to freely participate in community projects, and vice versa. In India, a textbook analysis highlighted the narrow portrayal of conservation, excluding the complex and multi-dimensional relationships Adivasi communities have with nature-spiritual, cultural, philosophical, and material.

Climate and Environmental Justice education must actively promote alternatives to unsustainable practices, foster engaged curricula, empower individuals, and advocate for sustainable, inclusive, and decolonized human activities. It should remain open to new discoveries and accommodate the unknown. For instance, in Rwanda, India, and South Africa, arts-based methods were used to challenge unsustainable norms, fostering understanding and engagement with climate and environmental justice. In India, Adivasi communities facing dispossession reclaimed ecocentric interconnected life perspectives, disrupted by colonial modernity, thereby reinterpreting ecological sustenance and social relationships. Rwandan eco-schools initiated projects to develop sustainable practices, and in South Africa, a community cooking project addressed sustainable food systems at the community level. In Somalia, nomadic pastoralists worked with researchers to improve livestock management in response to drought and climate change.

Reflecting on the Use of Knowledge Co-Creation as a Methodological Approach

An objective of TESF was to reflect on the use of knowledge co-creation as a methodological approach underpinning our work. Transforming education to address the needs and interests of historically disadvantaged groups is crucial, especially in the context of unsustainable development. This transformation towards sustainable futures is complex and requires a perspective that encompasses the views, interests, and lived experiences of those directly affected by these challenges. It involves leveraging knowledge from academic disciplines, as well as indigenous, local, and professional knowledge from communities, practitioners, policymakers, and stakeholders. Combining these diverse forms of expertise necessitates moving beyond traditional university-led research models, which often maintain knowledge hierarchies that sideline and undervalue non-academic knowledge.

Knowledge co-creation is gaining recognition as an effective methodology to understand and develop solutions for issues like climate change, social inequality, and unsustainable development. It is a method that not only informs policy and practice but is also deeply rooted in local realities and lived experiences, drawing critically from interdisciplinary and indigenous knowledge systems. Knowledge co-creation is especially promising for research that engages with the lived experiences of those impacted by inequality and unsustainable development and uses research methods that highlight and animate these experiences. The quality and credibility of research are contingent on it reflecting the voices, beliefs, and perspectives of those with first-hand experience of these complex realities. This approach also supports movements toward epistemic and social justice.

The TESF teams have shown that qualitative and arts-based research methods are well-suited to knowledge co-creation, offering participants diverse means to express the complexities of their lives. These methods can capture intricate details and subtleties and help to balance power dynamics between researchers and participants.

Our experiences in the TESF Network, however, suggest that adopting a knowledge co-creation approach can be novel in many settings and challenging even when it is familiar. Advancing toward knowledge co-creation and the democratisation of research necessitates ongoing support and resources, along with dismantling traditional barriers and hierarchies. Therefore, research processes should be adaptable and flexible from the outset. Research planning often tends towards predefined methods and strategies, but knowledge co-creation invites participants as co-researchers to shape and continuously modify projects through responsive, reflexive approaches. Building relationships and trust for this process is time-intensive and resource-dependent.

Ethical practices in knowledge co-creation transcend procedural ethics and institutional requirements. Everyday ethics that are meaningful in specific contexts, embodying the values and beliefs of individuals and communities, are essential. Addressing sensitive and complex issues also demands a particular ethics of care and critical empathy. Creating secure environments and using safe language are vital to meeting these ethical standards. Researchers require support for these methods, and institutions must be willing to re-evaluate strict protocols that may be unsuitable for these purposes.

Historically, research partnerships between the Global South and North have often been characterized by unequal power dynamics. The conventional colonial model of research has positioned Northern partners in a dominant role, setting the research agenda and dominating collaborations due to better access to funding and publishing opportunities. Southern partners have frequently been relegated to data collection roles, not as equals in the research process. Traditional approaches to capacity building have also been limited by a deficit view of Southern capabilities, focusing narrowly on the ability to apply established research methods, which reinforces power imbalances and impoverishes the research process. Embracing new approaches that reflect the lived experiences and contexts of the Global South offers the chance to develop mutual capacities and richer methodologies.

Moreover, traditional evaluation processes often measure success against predetermined Northern development criteria, which can limit the ability to respond to dynamic and evolving realities. Co-creating research with communities requires continuous monitoring and adjustment. Prioritizing pre-defined outcomes constrains the potential for ongoing reflection and learning, thereby hindering adaptation to unexpected challenges. One way to prioritize local agendas is by adopting a 'value-centred' approach to monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL). This approach ensures sufficient guidance and coherence across a network while remaining adaptable enough to support the varied aspirations of project teams in different global contexts, recognizing that desired outcomes and progress evaluations are subjective and should be determined by those directly engaged in the activities.
Exploitation Route Below are some suggestions summarised from project reports about how the outcomes of the funding may be taken forward and put to use by others:

Researchers:

• Collaborate with and conduct research within communities affected by threats to livelihoods, creating sustainable solutions.
• Embrace inclusive conceptualisations of sustainable livelihoods from the perspectives of those excluded from mainstream narratives.
• Undertake transdisciplinary, transformative educational research that addresses concerns of environmental and climate justice.
• Involve urban and rural communities, including vulnerable groups, from the early stages of research and problem identification.
• Explore interdisciplinary research to examine how educational inequality perpetuates social, gender, epistemic, spatial, and environmental injustices.
• Engage in co-creative research that challenges the dominant educational and sustainability discourses and is action-oriented towards those affected by inequalities.
• Prioritise equitable partnerships, capacity mobilisation, and learning processes that foreground local agendas and minimise power distortions in collaborative research.

Educators and Teachers:

• Create and adapt vocational programmes that enable vulnerable communities to transition to sustainable livelihoods.
• Establish inclusive, critical, and creative curricula and pedagogical practices that develop agency for transformative change.
• Recognise and value multiple ways of learning, embracing lifelong education initiatives and non-traditional community education.
• Get involved in knowledge co-creation as practitioners and teacher-researchers, seeking opportunities to develop expertise across community boundaries.
• Develop curricula and teaching practices that are equitable, and challenge established norms, fostering self-reflexivity for transformative change.

Policy Actors:

• Recognise the significance of and invest in vocational programmes that address sustainable livelihoods, as well as mainstream education programmes.
• Re-evaluate the colonial foundations of education systems to transform them into forms that are relevant and responsive to the needs of people and the planet.
• Ensure inclusive and participatory laws for urban and rural governance, articulated in languages accessible to communities, including the most vulnerable.
• Critically review inequalities in and through education; establish mechanisms for equitable quality education that is responsive to diverse communities and the environment.
• Reflect critically on the evidence base informing policies and offer support to knowledge and learning generated or co-created with those facing the challenges addressed by policies.

Engaged Activists:

• Recontextualise the sustainability agenda by integrating indigenous and local knowledge, thereby ensuring greater inclusivity.
• Empower communities to impact climate and environmental justice in local learning networks, forums, and media, and strengthen ties between communities and educational institutions for innovation.
• Advocate for improved urban living conditions, holding duty bearers accountable for interventions aimed at enhancing standards of living and quality of life.
• Collaborate with community groups and policymakers to conduct audits assessing policy impact and to advocate for necessary changes.
• Extend social learning to strengthen public advocacy and activism, co-developing the arguments necessary for effective community activism.

Universities

• Establish policies that are consistent with principles of transformative partnership working between researchers in the global North and South.

Research leaders and funders

• Take a pluralistic approach, recognising multiple knowledges and ways of framing ideas and give co-engaged research the time and resource it needs.
• Reform the way that funding calls are designed and implemented to redress Northern biases in the processes and outcomes of research.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Education

Environment

Government

Democracy and Justice
URL https://tesf.network/
 
Description The 67 projects funded through TESF were completed in 2023, so it is too early to assess sustained impact. However, the country synthesis reports highlight early indications of impact and future potential for impact. The action and activism-oriented nature of many of the projects meant that non-academic impact was often built into project designs, as evident in the discussion below. India The TESF India synthesis report emphasises the non-academic impact and legacy of its projects, focusing on gender identity, social disadvantage in education, transformative practices, and reimagining education for Indigenous communities through examples of community engagement, pedagogical innovations, and cultural sensitivities. One significant contribution is the examination of the lived experiences of transgender, gender non-conforming (GNC), and gender non-binary (GNB) persons within the Indian science ecosystem. The study reveals how these identities face systemic exclusion due to the gendered nature of science institutions, exclusionary curricula, and an epistemological discourse that erases their presence. Efforts to foster intersectional political solidarity between marginalised groups demonstrate the potential for transformative practices that challenge gendered, casteist, and ableist violence in higher education. Another area of impact is the educational journey of marginalised youth in Pune, Maharashtra, who are first-generation higher education learners from stigmatised occupations. The study discusses the challenges within the higher education system, including the lack of institutional support and the internalisation of failure, underscoring the need for more inclusive educational practices. The gender-conscious space created in the classroom through dialogue-based pedagogy is highlighted as a revolutionary approach towards fostering gender equality. This transformative practice cultivates gender consciousness among schoolteachers during pre-service programs, demonstrating significant shifts in classroom culture and student engagement with gender concepts. Furthermore, the non-academic legacy is evident in initiatives like the Keystone Foundation's work with Indigenous communities in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve and the Vishwa Bharati Vidyodaya Trust's culturally relevant learning systems for Adivasi children. These examples showcase successful community-driven approaches to education that respect and integrate local knowledge, languages, and cultures, contributing to the well-being of communities and the environment. Projects focusing on theatre and the arts as transformative pedagogies highlight the potential of performance to foster social imagination and challenge exclusionary practices in education. By engaging marginalised voices and employing embodied therapeutic practices, these initiatives demonstrate the power of creative expression in fostering critical consciousness, empathy, and agency among participants. The non-academic impact of the TESF projects extends beyond immediate educational outcomes to encompass broader societal transformations. By addressing intersecting inequalities, advocating for culturally sensitive and inclusive educational practices, and leveraging creative pedagogies, the projects contribute to a more equitable and sustainable future. These initiatives underscore the importance of reimagining education in ways that empower marginalised communities, promote environmental stewardship, and challenge existing social hierarchies. Rwanda The Rwanda synthesis report comprehensively analyses the non-academic impact and legacy of research conducted in Rwanda. The focus is on transforming education systems to support sustainable development goals through innovative research and community engagement. Key highlights from the report include: Democratisation of Knowledge Creation: The TESF Rwanda Hub emphasised democratising knowledge creation by involving diverse stakeholders, including local communities, in the research process. Projects under the TESF umbrella practised co-creation methods, ensuring that knowledge generation and sharing processes were accessible to a wider audience, enhancing social-economic transformation. These methods ranged from intra-agency collaboration within the same institution to inter-agency collaboration across different sectors, highlighting the importance of community dialogue and integrating Indigenous knowledge systems in educational research. Addressing Social Inequalities and Inclusiveness: The projects aimed at transforming the Rwandan education system into a more inclusive one, addressing social inequalities by focusing on vulnerable and marginalised groups. Strategies included community dialogue for effective inclusion, sensitisation, and advocacy for inclusive education. The emphasis was on creating safe and supportive environments for learning and sharing experiences, with special attention to students with disabilities, gender disparities, and socio-economic vulnerabilities. Skills and Competencies for Employability: There was a concerted effort to develop relevant skills and competencies for employability, with a focus on leveraging local traditional practices for sustainable inclusion. The projects explored how education can empower individuals with the skills needed for sustainable livelihoods in a changing environment, emphasising the role of technology and community education in imparting knowledge and skills for a sustainable future. Promoting Indigenous Knowledge and Community Engagement: The TESF Rwanda Hub highlighted the importance of Indigenous knowledge systems and community engagement in shaping research and teaching for sustainable futures. Projects incorporated local knowledge and practices into their research methodologies, aiming to create a bridge between traditional wisdom and contemporary educational practices. This approach facilitated the co-creation of knowledge, ensuring that research outputs were relevant and impactful to the local communities. Challenges and Opportunities for Urban and Rural Education: The report discusses the unique challenges and opportunities in addressing the educational needs of urban and rural populations in Rwanda. Projects under TESF explored innovative approaches to coping with urban growth challenges, promoting food security, and integrating climate action into teaching-learning. The aim was to develop education systems that are responsive to the specific needs of different communities, contributing to sustainable cities and communities. Overall, the Rwanda synthesis report underscores the significant non-academic impact and legacy of its research in Rwanda. By focusing on democratising knowledge creation, addressing social inequalities, promoting employability skills, and engaging with Indigenous knowledge and community practices, the projects contribute to transforming education systems for sustainable futures. These efforts highlight the critical role of education in achieving sustainable development goals, offering valuable lessons and insights for policymakers, educators, and researchers. Somalia/ Somaliland The Somalia/ Somaliland synthesis report delves into the non-academic impacts of research projects across various communities, emphasising sustainable development goals (SDGs) such as education, sustainable livelihoods, climate action, and building sustainable cities and communities. Impact within Communities The projects profoundly impacted communities by empowering individuals with critical skills and knowledge. For example, 75 applicants successfully co-produced a literacy/numeracy curriculum, learning to read and write. Informal traders developed a numeracy, literacy, and mobile money curriculum, enhancing their livelihoods by enabling them to navigate financial transactions and form a lending network. This demonstrates the tangible benefits of education in improving community members' economic status and capabilities. Legacy of Research Projects The research projects leave a lasting legacy through various initiatives benefiting communities and fostering sustainable development. Initiatives such as the Eco-Schools project introduced in Somaliland for the first time, promoting environmental protection and sustainable livelihoods starting from the educational setting and expanding into the wider community. This project created a network of stakeholders collaborating to develop an environmental education program that encourages action-based learning using indigenous methods. The impact extends to specific groups, like young women from internally displaced camps who participated in sports development projects, gaining physical and mental health benefits, confidence, and a platform for international research contribution. Projects also tackled gender and social inequalities by empowering women and minority communities, promoting engagement with formal and informal education, and enhancing employment opportunities for disadvantaged groups like deaf people. Educational Initiatives and Climate Action Educational initiatives aimed at sustainable development and climate action have been significant. Projects like the Climate action in context, which developed an online Indigenous language extracurricular course, highlight the importance of making climate action relevant to people's lives and identities. This approach underscores the value of local languages and cultures in addressing climate change. Addressing Inequalities The report also emphasizes the role of education in addressing various forms of inequalities, including economic, social, and gender inequalities. By empowering marginalised groups and integrating sustainable livelihoods with education, the projects reduce poverty and enhance social inclusion. In conclusion, the non-academic impact of TESF's research projects in Somalia/ Somaliland reflects a comprehensive approach to sustainable development, touching on crucial aspects like community empowerment, education for sustainable development, climate action, and addressing inequalities. These projects demonstrate tangible benefits in the communities involved and set a foundation for future initiatives aimed at sustainable and inclusive growth. South Africa The South African synthesis report unveils a comprehensive exploration of the non-academic impacts of 14 interconnected projects aimed at weaving together education and sustainable development within diverse South African communities. This extensive initiative has underscored the potential of educational projects to significantly contribute beyond academic realms, touching on aspects of community engagement, capacity building, activism, crisis response, ethical practices, and transformative education, thereby painting a vivid picture of education as a catalyst for sustainable, equitable futures. Community Engagement and Capacity Building A cornerstone of the TESF projects has been their focus on strengthening community capacities and fostering active engagement. For instance, "School Principals as Conduits for Sustainable Livelihoods" leveraged school food gardens as learning and knowledge exchange platforms. This initiative not only imparted sustainable gardening skills to students and community members but also inspired the replication of these practices in home settings. The ripple effect of this knowledge transfer was evident as nearby schools adopted similar sustainable gardening techniques, showcasing the project's extensive community impact. The Power of Activism Activism emerged as a potent educational tool across several TESF initiatives. Projects like "Universities as Sustainable Communities" and "Water Mapping" harnessed the arts-music, videos, maps-to engage with pressing issues such as water security and land rights. These creative endeavours empowered participants to voice their concerns and advocate for their rights, highlighting the significance of framing sustainability challenges from a human rights perspective. Such activism fostered a strong sense of agency among participants, pushing the boundaries of traditional educational approaches to embrace a more inclusive, action-oriented model. Navigating Crises The COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating KZN floods starkly tested the resilience and adaptability of TESF projects. These crises necessitated a flexible approach to project implementation, exemplified by the "School Principals as Conduits for Sustainable Livelihoods" initiative, which had to reevaluate its objectives in the face of the floods. This adaptability underscores the critical need for educational projects to remain responsive to unforeseen challenges, thereby ensuring their relevance and impact even in crisis situations. Ethical Research Practices A deep commitment to ethical research underscored the TESF projects, particularly emphasising principles such as respect, trust, and meaningful participation. These projects showcased the importance of creating safe spaces for dialogue, allowing for a rich exchange of ideas and knowledge. For instance, the "Uncanny Lore" project emphasised participatory methods to engage marginalised groups, ensuring diverse voices were heard and valued. This ethical stance enriched the research process and strengthened the projects' community impact. Transformative Educational Practices The TESF initiatives demonstrated a remarkable capacity for transforming education to meet sustainable development challenges. By engaging communities in participatory and action-oriented learning, these projects went beyond the confines of traditional educational settings. For example, "Healing is in the Pot" used art-based methods to delve into Indigenous knowledge, creating inclusive spaces for dialogue and co-creation of knowledge. Such approaches not only facilitated the inclusion of marginalised voices but also showcased the transformative power of education in fostering sustainable futures. Empowerment Through Sustainability Several TESF projects highlighted the role of education in empowering communities towards sustainability. For instance, the "First We Eat" project worked with preschools to integrate food gardens into educational settings, thereby teaching young learners about nutrition, sustainability, and environmental care. This initiative not only improved nutritional outcomes but also fostered a sense of responsibility and stewardship among the community's youngest members. Learning in the Face of Adversity The TESF projects' response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent crises like the KZN floods exemplified the importance of resilience and adaptability in educational initiatives. These challenges prompted projects to explore new learning pathways and adapt their methods to continue their impact. The resilience shown by projects such as the "School Principals as Conduits for Sustainable Livelihoods" highlighted the potential for education to respond to crises and learn and grow from them. Conclusion The TESF South Africa Hub's report articulates a compelling narrative of the non-academic impact of research, emphasising the role of education in addressing sustainability challenges within the South African context. Through community engagement, capacity building, activism, and adaptive learning, these projects have showcased the transformative potential of education for sustainable development. By fostering participatory approaches, ethical research practices, and innovative methodologies, the TESF initiatives have contributed significantly to community empowerment and sustainable development. These projects highlight the importance of flexible, inclusive, and responsive educational practices in building resilient, sustainable futures. In conclusion, the TESF South Africa Hub's efforts underscore the indispensable role of education as a lever for social change, demonstrating its profound impact on communities' sustainable and equitable development. Through these initiatives, education emerges as a path to academic achievement and a vital tool for community empowerment, resilience, and sustainability.
First Year Of Impact 2023
Sector Agriculture, Food and Drink,Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Environment,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
Impact Types Cultural

Societal

Economic

Policy & public services
 
Description TES4SD Network Plus Partnership Agreement 
Organisation Indian Institute for Human Settlements
Country India 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Professor Leon Tikly is the Principal Investigator of the programme 'Transforming Education Systems for Sustainable Development (TES4SD) Network Plus'. Professor Tikly provides programme leadership and is the overall budget holder. He convenes the Leadership Team and Advisory Group, and oversees impact, outputs and publications. He is supported in Bristol by Dr Rhona Brown (Senior Research Associate), a Programme Network Manager and a Finance and Contracts Manager. The co-design of the TES4SD capacity development strategy, including national capacity development activities and outputs, are overseen in Bristol by Dr Rafael Mitchell.
Collaborator Contribution The Bristol team works closely with all of the programme Co-Is, including those acting as hub leads for the four national hubs, all of whom have considerable experience of project management as well as the economic, social, cultural and environmental contexts of the four principal countries of research focus (Batra in India, Tusiime in Rwanda, Ismail in Somalia/Somaliland and Lotz-Sisitka in South Africa). The hub teams are critical in terms of overseeing and supporting the numerous commissioned research projects in their respective countries, in leading on their country-level synthesis work and in contributing to numerous outputs including publications and the network-level synthesis report.
Impact https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5245290 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4471148 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4477103 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4464262 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4462433 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4430887 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4331474 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4331432 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3778587 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4134931 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4022328 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4242956 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4059822 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3953643 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3953704 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3952851 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4243119 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3796143 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4059708 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4121112 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4120947 https://doi.org/10.4236/sm.2020.104013 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4327076 https://doi.org/10.24943/SASCA02.2022 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5770312 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5704833 https://doi.org/10.24943/ICPELHI08.2021 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5042122 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7569116 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2022.2129957 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6490336
Start Year 2019
 
Description TES4SD Network Plus Partnership Agreement 
Organisation Rhodes University
Country South Africa 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Professor Leon Tikly is the Principal Investigator of the programme 'Transforming Education Systems for Sustainable Development (TES4SD) Network Plus'. Professor Tikly provides programme leadership and is the overall budget holder. He convenes the Leadership Team and Advisory Group, and oversees impact, outputs and publications. He is supported in Bristol by Dr Rhona Brown (Senior Research Associate), a Programme Network Manager and a Finance and Contracts Manager. The co-design of the TES4SD capacity development strategy, including national capacity development activities and outputs, are overseen in Bristol by Dr Rafael Mitchell.
Collaborator Contribution The Bristol team works closely with all of the programme Co-Is, including those acting as hub leads for the four national hubs, all of whom have considerable experience of project management as well as the economic, social, cultural and environmental contexts of the four principal countries of research focus (Batra in India, Tusiime in Rwanda, Ismail in Somalia/Somaliland and Lotz-Sisitka in South Africa). The hub teams are critical in terms of overseeing and supporting the numerous commissioned research projects in their respective countries, in leading on their country-level synthesis work and in contributing to numerous outputs including publications and the network-level synthesis report.
Impact https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5245290 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4471148 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4477103 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4464262 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4462433 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4430887 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4331474 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4331432 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3778587 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4134931 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4022328 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4242956 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4059822 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3953643 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3953704 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3952851 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4243119 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3796143 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4059708 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4121112 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4120947 https://doi.org/10.4236/sm.2020.104013 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4327076 https://doi.org/10.24943/SASCA02.2022 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5770312 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5704833 https://doi.org/10.24943/ICPELHI08.2021 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5042122 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7569116 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2022.2129957 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6490336
Start Year 2019
 
Description TES4SD Network Plus Partnership Agreement 
Organisation Transparency Solutions
Country Somalia 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution Professor Leon Tikly is the Principal Investigator of the programme 'Transforming Education Systems for Sustainable Development (TES4SD) Network Plus'. Professor Tikly provides programme leadership and is the overall budget holder. He convenes the Leadership Team and Advisory Group, and oversees impact, outputs and publications. He is supported in Bristol by Dr Rhona Brown (Senior Research Associate), a Programme Network Manager and a Finance and Contracts Manager. The co-design of the TES4SD capacity development strategy, including national capacity development activities and outputs, are overseen in Bristol by Dr Rafael Mitchell.
Collaborator Contribution The Bristol team works closely with all of the programme Co-Is, including those acting as hub leads for the four national hubs, all of whom have considerable experience of project management as well as the economic, social, cultural and environmental contexts of the four principal countries of research focus (Batra in India, Tusiime in Rwanda, Ismail in Somalia/Somaliland and Lotz-Sisitka in South Africa). The hub teams are critical in terms of overseeing and supporting the numerous commissioned research projects in their respective countries, in leading on their country-level synthesis work and in contributing to numerous outputs including publications and the network-level synthesis report.
Impact https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5245290 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4471148 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4477103 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4464262 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4462433 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4430887 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4331474 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4331432 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3778587 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4134931 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4022328 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4242956 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4059822 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3953643 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3953704 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3952851 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4243119 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3796143 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4059708 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4121112 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4120947 https://doi.org/10.4236/sm.2020.104013 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4327076 https://doi.org/10.24943/SASCA02.2022 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5770312 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5704833 https://doi.org/10.24943/ICPELHI08.2021 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5042122 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7569116 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2022.2129957 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6490336
Start Year 2019
 
Description TES4SD Network Plus Partnership Agreement 
Organisation University of Glasgow
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Professor Leon Tikly is the Principal Investigator of the programme 'Transforming Education Systems for Sustainable Development (TES4SD) Network Plus'. Professor Tikly provides programme leadership and is the overall budget holder. He convenes the Leadership Team and Advisory Group, and oversees impact, outputs and publications. He is supported in Bristol by Dr Rhona Brown (Senior Research Associate), a Programme Network Manager and a Finance and Contracts Manager. The co-design of the TES4SD capacity development strategy, including national capacity development activities and outputs, are overseen in Bristol by Dr Rafael Mitchell.
Collaborator Contribution The Bristol team works closely with all of the programme Co-Is, including those acting as hub leads for the four national hubs, all of whom have considerable experience of project management as well as the economic, social, cultural and environmental contexts of the four principal countries of research focus (Batra in India, Tusiime in Rwanda, Ismail in Somalia/Somaliland and Lotz-Sisitka in South Africa). The hub teams are critical in terms of overseeing and supporting the numerous commissioned research projects in their respective countries, in leading on their country-level synthesis work and in contributing to numerous outputs including publications and the network-level synthesis report.
Impact https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5245290 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4471148 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4477103 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4464262 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4462433 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4430887 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4331474 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4331432 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3778587 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4134931 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4022328 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4242956 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4059822 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3953643 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3953704 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3952851 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4243119 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3796143 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4059708 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4121112 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4120947 https://doi.org/10.4236/sm.2020.104013 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4327076 https://doi.org/10.24943/SASCA02.2022 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5770312 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5704833 https://doi.org/10.24943/ICPELHI08.2021 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5042122 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7569116 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2022.2129957 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6490336
Start Year 2019
 
Description TES4SD Network Plus Partnership Agreement 
Organisation University of Rwanda
Country Rwanda 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Professor Leon Tikly is the Principal Investigator of the programme 'Transforming Education Systems for Sustainable Development (TES4SD) Network Plus'. Professor Tikly provides programme leadership and is the overall budget holder. He convenes the Leadership Team and Advisory Group, and oversees impact, outputs and publications. He is supported in Bristol by Dr Rhona Brown (Senior Research Associate), a Programme Network Manager and a Finance and Contracts Manager. The co-design of the TES4SD capacity development strategy, including national capacity development activities and outputs, are overseen in Bristol by Dr Rafael Mitchell.
Collaborator Contribution The Bristol team works closely with all of the programme Co-Is, including those acting as hub leads for the four national hubs, all of whom have considerable experience of project management as well as the economic, social, cultural and environmental contexts of the four principal countries of research focus (Batra in India, Tusiime in Rwanda, Ismail in Somalia/Somaliland and Lotz-Sisitka in South Africa). The hub teams are critical in terms of overseeing and supporting the numerous commissioned research projects in their respective countries, in leading on their country-level synthesis work and in contributing to numerous outputs including publications and the network-level synthesis report.
Impact https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5245290 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4471148 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4477103 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4464262 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4462433 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4430887 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4331474 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4331432 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3778587 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4134931 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4022328 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4242956 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4059822 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3953643 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3953704 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3952851 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4243119 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3796143 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4059708 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4121112 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4120947 https://doi.org/10.4236/sm.2020.104013 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4327076 https://doi.org/10.24943/SASCA02.2022 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5770312 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5704833 https://doi.org/10.24943/ICPELHI08.2021 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5042122 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7569116 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2022.2129957 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6490336
Start Year 2019
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Agriculture, Arts and Livelihoods: investigating integrated school learning approaches for improved educational and livelihood outcomes ZA35 
Organisation Institute of Natural Resources
Country South Africa 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: Rural schools in South Africa face multiple challenges in providing learners with the diverse skills required to advance effectively in modern society. Learners come from communities that are characterised by poverty, food insecurity, unemployment and most do not have the benefit of growing up in households that provide comfort, stimulation and which effectively support learning. This project explored the opportunities that food gardens (tower gardens in particular) and choir provide to enrich the learning environment at rural schools in KwaZulu-Natal. Besides looking at gardens and song in isolation, the project also explored how these two elements could be combined to support the knowledge development process and to change perceptions about agriculture and the environment. The tower gardens were completely unfamiliar to both learners and staff at the schools and this, combined with the approach to introducing and establishing the gardens, made it a fun process. The approaches that were used by the research team (in particular the facilitators) were also new to the teachers and learners. They included collective learning processes where the learners could collectively explain the functioning of the gardens, rather than always being expected to answer as individuals. They were also given the opportunity to draw on their knowledge about farming activities in their communities, or in their own homes. The teachers were surprised at the behaviour and capacities shown by the learners in the context of the garden - they were more engaging and interactive. They were able to be creative and make songs that they performed to other learners, staff and parents at school events. The teachers had not expected them to be able to do this on their own.  The teachers clearly articulated the way that the gardens offered opportunities to provide practical links to the content of the classes, especially with maths. The limitation of the project timeframe was that it did not allow the teachers to work with the team to find ways to actively integrate the use of the gardens into the school programme as part of the curriculum and their activities were limited to break times and sessions after school. One of the schools asked for additional gardens for their scouts and girl guide groups, which showed that they can also effectively contribute to extramural activities of learners. One of the major lessons from the project is that while a school food garden can contribute directly to improved nutrition of learners if it produces sufficient food or targets specific needy households, it can contribute in many other ways too. Firstly, it can build capacity of learners, staff and the local community to produce their own food (even exposing people to different food types such as broccoli and herbs); secondly it can contribute to knowledge generation and consolidation through experiential learning. However, it also has the potential to contribute to a range of soft skills that will prepare our youth for the future. Teamwork, decision making, planning, speaking in public were all skills that emerged from the project activities, as well as some social consciousness related to decisions such as who should receive the harvested vegetables.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Breaking through the Intergenerational Cycle of Educational Inequalities: First Generation Learners, Stigmatized Occupational Groups and Sustainable Futures IN001 
Organisation Savitribai Phule Pune University
Country India 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: This study sought to investigate educational inequalities amongst precarious and stigmatized workers and unravel how the deeply intertwined inequalities of caste, class, and gender shape micro-practices in this group that work towards their children's educational exclusion as well as mobility. It focused more specifically on the gendered practices and processes that impede the struggles of young women for mobility. It explored how parental occupation, stigma, subsequent living conditions, neighbourhood, and mobilizations of and interventions for workers impact the educational journeys of first-generation college students. It focused on the city of Pune which has witnessed a long history of struggles and mobilizations of informal workers. We selected six occupational groups: waste- pickers, sanitation workers, domestic workers, sex workers, head load workers, and brick kiln workers. These different work sectors vary in terms of the precarity of work, the social stigma attached to it, legal protection, civil society support, and political mobilization. We approached the workers through their organizations to understand their role in the educational attainment of the children of these workers, shaping the aspiration of parents and children regarding inter-generational mobility through higher education. This study combined quantitative and qualitative methods with action research component to work with different stakeholders. The data was collected through survey, life narratives and focus group discussions. Along with mapping the struggle of the first-generation learners, the project was also imagined as a pedagogic space, a collective transformative, reflexive, and democratizing space for radical imagination within and beyond the university. During this process we could address - how do students learn about critical methodological and ethical issues of research. and how do they learn about the working of social power and transformative politics? We thus explored the political, affective, and visceral dimensions of this learning process through our research study. This research underlined that higher education has been recognized as a medium through which mobility can be achieved and one can aspire for a better future. This is seen as unsettling the social reproduction of inequalities of caste and gender. The young children whom we studied seem to uphold these aspirational mobilities as they struggle to break through intergenerational inequalities and sticky stigma; while higher educational institutions remain apathetic and hostile to their struggles. In the absence of support from educational institutions, along with families, it is workers' organizations and unions on one hand, and non-profit organizations, individual charity, and private coaching classes for the poor that come in to support and manage the struggle of first-generation learners for mobility. The study saw critical empathy as one of the key mechanisms to challenge the indignities and disaffection experienced by first-generation college students from socially marginalized communities. The transformative pedagogies would enable to challenge the institutional and epistemic violence experienced by first-generation students.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Coping with Kigali Urban Growth Challenges: educating communities for building livelihood resilience and wellbeing RW35 
Organisation University of Rwanda
Country Rwanda 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: The project 'Coping with Kigali Urban Growth Challenges: Educating Communities for Building Livelihood Resilience and Wellbeing' is a research and intervention project based on an innovative lifelong learning approach assessing urban planning challenges and how these affect residents' livelihoods, with a view to raising their awareness of that issue, making it their concern, and mobilising educative strategies to improve their living conditions on one hand and consequently contributing to sustainable urban planning on the other. The three objectives of the project were: -To conduct a situational analysis of the social, economic and ecological challenges of rapid expansion on Kigali' suburbs /peri urban areas; -To formulate modules, and to train and educate selected community members in skills that help them to cope with urban growth challenges; -To build synergies among stakeholders' networks for continuity in educating communities for building livelihood resilience and wellbeing. The project produced good results. The success of the small projects revealed that a small input can create a big output, produce a wide outcome, and generate a long-term impact. Thirty target community residents are putting into practice knowledge and project ideas co-created from a participatory training and guidance on how to sustain a resilient and sustainable living through a seed fund of £80. Their testimonial results included the raising of business capital/improvement of the activities, job creation, payment of school fees, savings, self-reliance and food security. In turn, this enabled them to cope with an urban living style and minimise the recurrent mobility that contributes to unmanaged urban growth and its associated challenges. The synergy of actors including university researchers and students, local leaders, and residents, has been a strength in this project proving that a multilateral collaboration of actors can work as an effective model to address urban issues.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Development of water classrooms for middle school students IN017E 
Organisation Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune
Country India 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: Water, recognized by United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 6, is essential to sustain all life. It intersects with various aspects of our civilization, heritage, health and survival. In this project, we developed pedagogical tools using place-based, multi-disciplinary, imaginal and interactive content for middle school students. The expected outcome of this pedagogy is to equip students with the knowledge and core competencies such as critical transdisciplinary analysis, systems thinking and collaborative decision-making that are essential to reimagine just, resilient and equitable water futures. We called this curriculum as the "Water Classrooms". The core partners in this work included Living Waters Museum, Centre for Water Research, Science Activity Centre at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER Pune) and the Centre for Environment Education (Pune). The project was developed in close collaboration with the team managing the project - Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures-India at the Indian Institute of Human Settlements, Bangalore, India (TESF-IIHS) and was funded by TESF-IIHS, GCRF-UKRI. The project report gives a detailed methodology used for developing "Water Classrooms" through contextual partnerships with multiple stakeholders, including water experts, academicians, educators, artists, grassroot organisations and students. It examines the data collected during dissemination workshops with around thirty middle school students from six schools in and around Pune, using qualitative and semi-quantitative analyses. The report presents ways in which art and writing exercises were used to capture and evaluate the transformation of student perceptions during the course of the sessions. Such analysis helped us to articulate the impact of this pedagogy beyond its mere outreach statistics. In addition to the physical and biological aspects of water, students were able to correlate social, cultural and ethical aspects of water to their everyday lives after the sessions. A student noted, "I never thought water and gender could be related topics." The work done over the course of one year (Nov 2021 - Oct 2022) culminated into four deliverables - an online teaching resource, a policy document, a talk series for holistic understanding of sustainability (and) education and a physical and digital exhibition-of-learning that displays students' works of art - drawing, poems, stories. All these outputs can be accessed at this link (see below). The overall concept, process and transformations of the participants and educators on the team have been captured in this short film (see below).
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs and https://waterclassrooms.in/ https://tesf.network/dipping-into-punes-water-classrooms/
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Education and sustainable livelihoods for informal traders SO03 
Organisation University of Hargeisa
Country Somalia 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: This project examined the research question 'How can basic education be provided in a way that is best suited to promoting sustainable livelihood aspirations of informal traders?' A university in the Horn of Africa co-produced the curriculum with low-income and informal traders, which is significant as the co-production of a curriculum with people who are not literate or numerate is a creative and unusual approach that has never been done in the region and rarely elsewhere. They provided a short pilot course of basic education, as a contribution to sustainable development, to learn more general lessons about education for sustainable development within and beyond the region. The project become successful and made a significant impact on both the university and the beneficiaries. For instance, people who were not able to recognise basic numbers and letters are now able to read, write and do the necessary business calculations. The university has also benefited from the programme. We have learned new ways of educating informal traders and understood their perspectives. Our students, who taught the beneficiaries, felt that they have contributed to their society and are willing to continue the support even after the project closure.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Education, Margins and City: Examining the Linkages through an Ethnographic Exploration IN078E 
Organisation Azim Premji University
Country India 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: City's relationship with its margins in the context of how state affects the lives of the people has increasingly become an important site of research-especially how pressures of governance split the nature of power and violence of the state at the margins vis-à-vis the city-where the experience of the state and how it operates is starkly different from how it unfolds for the middle-classes of the city. Education in this context has been an under researched area. This research aims to examine how education unfolds in the informal settlement (basti) of south Delhi. Literature on education has established how it plays a hegemonic role in maintaining the existing status quo. The project explores the role that the educational processes at the margins of the city play in maintaining the subservient status of margins vis-à-vis city. It aims to understand the lived experiences of children and examines the wider public meanings of education in its relationship with the state apparatus. In our research we found that many of the binaries plaguing our education system today function as an aesthetic code that legitimises certain education practices and delegitimises others. The teaching approach that unfolds for the margins ranges from forms of rational techniques like rote memorisation to aesthetic codes that separate "achha bacha" (good child) from "ganda bacha" (bad child). The intersection of margins and the city in the context of education is characterised by various aesthetic categories, but this is also where the danger of viewing the "other" as uncivilised is evident. The people from marginalised areas are often labelled as unhygienic, deviant, and even sexually deviant. Margins have internalised the 'bourgeoise gaze' and the middle-class sensibilities with which they are seen by the city. If the formal educational spaces of the school, NGOs, and tuition centres see these children as contaminated, this practice of looking at children, their basti lives, and livelihood as dirty is internalised by children and adults at the basti also. The informal-illegal continuity through which margins are invisibilized takes a concrete form through the documentation that the state demands. The study also shows how adults take the question of illegality that is ascribed to them seriously and constantly speak of how they are denied a life of dignity. In conversations as well as interviews, what emerges is the desire to have a life of dignity. Here one can see the nuances of the relationship between equality and sustainability. For them to have an equal claim to the city means a life of dignity. Also, contrary to the widely held assumption that social divisions and hierarchies fade away in urbanised environments that promote modernity and meritocracy, there is a growing recognition of the intersectionality of social categorisations in these spaces. Children of the basti are constantly trying to belong to the city while being actively marginalised as their class, caste, religion, region, and gender intersect. While education has lacked in creativity, its instrumentality still exists and needs to be further explored. Spending time with children shows how they do not have hopes of employment even after being educated. Despite their claims that they want to be a nurse, doctor, or engineer, spending a little time with them makes them reveal more pragmatic choices. However, they do know that the right to the city comes through education. Here one can see the aesthetics of documentation required by the city, where looking educated and talking like an educated person has value,
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: First We Eat! Mobilising ECD centres to develop agency for growing, eating and sharing healthy food ZA19 
Organisation Rhodes University
Country South Africa 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: In 2016, the South African Demographic and Health Survey reported that 27% of children under age 5 are stunted, 3% are wasted, and 6% are underweight. In the small city of Makhanda, these statistics may be even higher in the context of social-ecological-economic injustice. This collaborative research project sought to respond by supporting practitioners from 12 selected Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres across Makhanda to establish on-site food gardens. The team wanted to research how (if at all) those ECD centres could be transformed into vibrant learning hubs that develop individual and collective agency for growing, eating and sharing healthy food. Partners included the Environmental Learning Research Centre, the Centre for Social Development, Umthathi Training Trust and the Makhanda Circle of Unity. Research participants included ECD practitioners, community educators and gardening facilitators from CSD and Umthathi, and any parents, caregivers or interested community members who interact with the food gardening and informal learning processes. The project sought to generate data through participant observations (including photographs and videos), semi-structured interviews with selected parents and community members, and photo elicitation interviews with ECD practitioners and children at the ECD centres. The research project drew primarily on Bronfenbrenner's Bio-ecological Systems approach to child development, social learning theory and post-Vygotskian accounts of agency to analyse and represent the data.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Girls Sport for Development SO14 
Organisation Transparency Solutions
Country Somalia 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: Scholarly research on Sport for Development (SFD) had its origins in an attempt to understand the relationships between the content, processes and outcomes of SFD programmes. A review of literature found that SFD could have positive impacts on reducing the inequality faced by girls and women. It also found the need to engage much more with SFD in low income country contexts and more need to explore how exactly SFD can enhance the ability of girls to live the lives they value. This project sought to create new knowledge in relation to both of those questions that would speak both to the specific context of Somaliland and to SFD more generally. This project was exceptionally well placed because it innovatively brought together two pioneers of SFD. The aim of the Community Sport Organisation was to raise Somaliland youth to international levels in terms of sports as well as to build the young generation mentally and physically through physical education, capacity building programmers, leadership training, peer to peer sessions and life skills programmes. In Somaliland women sports programmes are very limited and Community Sport Organisation presents a rare opportunity for girls to participate in sports. The aim of the project was to co-produce evidence and arguments about how sport can be a means of sustainable development for girls. The project gathered the evidence and arguments in a variety of ways aimed at maximising impact. Although the Community Sport Organisation has not framed its sport for girls as explicitly SFD, there is overlap in approach. By adopting an explicit SFD approach that draws on the experience of the Community Sport Organisation, the project's objectives included enhancing the SFD content of the organisation's work and drawing lessons for SFD from the project.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Green Garowe Research Project SO11 
Organisation Puntland State University
Country Somalia 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: Green Garowe was a research project implemented by Puntland State University in collaboration with Garowe local residents and Garowe local government from December 2021 to August 2022. The project aimed at investigating the effective and sustainable mechanisms of promoting environmental protection as an educational process through community engagement with urban tree planting. The specific objectives included: exploring the existing tree planting practices in Garowe city, establishing factors hindering tree planting, demonstrating the tree planting process to community members for learning and practical action and developing sustainable funding approaches for tree planting in Garowe city. A participatory approach was adopted with the intention of promoting co-production. Emphasis was put on promoting learning by practice(doing); this was achieved by demonstrating tree planting, protection, and care to the community members by the research team to enhance learning. The project team engaged the villagers in brainstorming sessions, focus group discussions and tree planting exercises. This was intended to enhance learning and promote project ownership. During data collection, the research team used qualitative methods, such as interviews, focus group discussions, observation and document reviews. These methods were chosen because they provided in-depth details on tree planting practices in Garowe city. The data collected was transcribed and analysed thematically. The study identified that the city of Garowe had a tree deficit of 90,000 trees and tree planting was hindered by several environmental, administrative, economic, social, cultural and ecological challenges. As a result, the study team recommended the following to be done in order to increase tree planting in the city of Garowe. (a) Education and awareness campaigns on tree planning to be intensified in schools, and the general community. (b) Tree planting policy and by-laws to be enacted by the local council government to enforce tree planting and protection. (c) More research to be conducted on tree diseases, tree protection methods, better methods of tree planting and best tree species. (d) Sustainable funding mechanisms such as village tree fund, involving the diaspora community and the corporate organisations should be activated. (e) The community should be engaged in tree planting activities through traditional and religious leaders and the use of social media should be embraced to create awareness and engage the community as well. In conclusion, though it was discovered that tree planting in Garowe was challenging, there is enough evidence to prove that trees can grow and survive in the city of Garowe given the right care and protection.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Hormuud: leadership towards a sustainable circular economy in Somalia SO06 
Organisation Hormuud University
Country Somalia 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: Circular economy (CE) is a sustainable development strategy that tackles urgent environmental degradation and resource efficiency. CE has 3R principles to optimise use of the materials: reduce energy and resource extraction, reuse materials over and over again and finally, recycle them at the end of their lifecycle. This study was conducted in a Somalia-based Hormuud telecoms company. The purpose of the study was to examine Hormuud telecom's leadership towards a circular economy. The largest telecommunication company in Somalia offers voice, internet, GSM and renewable energy. The main objective was to examine how Hormuud telecom can contribute to a circular economy in order to help stakeholders involved in organisations committed to the transition towards a circular economy. This study investigated "Hormuud: leadership towards a sustainable circular economy in Somalia" It adopted a descriptive survey method using a quantitative approach that generates and uses statistics and numerical data. The study found that Hormuud telecom can include sustainable circular economy to design its products and services according to circular economy principles: sustainable business and environmentally friendly products and services, recycle and reuse product materials, building business leadership transition to circular economy set out measurement process to indicate and monitor implementation of eco-business system.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Involving the community in education for urban life skills for sustainable livelihoods in a resource-deprived context in Kigali RW76 
Organisation University of Rwanda
Country Rwanda 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: Based on challenges of collaboration between community and school, this project sought to determine strategies of enhancing community-school collaborations for the Technical and Vocational Training (TVET) programmes with focus on TVET schools located in the informal urban settlements in Rwanda. This project changed the relationship between the community and the technical school that offers vocational trainings to the youth and young adults in Giheka informal settlement in Kigali. The strengthened school-community collaborations enabled the community leaders to contribute to determining need and co-constructing the content of urban life skills (transferrable) training manual, integrated by the Busy Bees Foundation School into existing TEVT programmes. Usually, the school offers training in tailoring and sewing, mushroom farming, and small-scale urban farming. Following the results of the project intervention activities, the school pioneered the integration of soft skills into this vocational programme. Also, the project contributed to creating a legacy of mutual support between the school and the community leadership, which increased the school's levels of legitimacy, transparency and accountability (LTA) to the community it serves. The project has three major findings: Firstly, the communities in a resource-deprived urban context have the capacity to contribute effectively to informing TVET schools to provide technical and transferable skills training that responds to the community development needs. However, this capacity needs to be reorganised, restructured and repackaged to enable and facilitate a strong collaboration between the community and the school in the vocational training to the youth and young adults. Secondly, there are working strategies for the collaborations between the community and TVET schools to effectively inform the skills training programmes in a resource-deprived urban context. The collaborations need to involve various partners including academic and research institutions, non-government organisations, and the (local) government institutions.  Lastly, the youth and young adults need to be fully equipped for employment/ entrepreneurship opportunities in a resource-deprived urban context, through the quality technical and vocational training they receive and the transferable skills that are integrated into the usual training programme. The content of the programme needs to be enriched through a formal engagement with the community leaders.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: LMeet the NEET: Exploring the lived experiences of Rwandan girls and young women not in employment, education or training RW13 
Organisation University of Rwanda
Country Rwanda 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: This project builds around the assumption that education is one of the main preconditions for women to easily access the labour market. It also builds around the fact that within the last 25 years, the government of Rwanda has massively promoted gender equality in access to education at all levels and gender equality across all sectors. Despite this, existing data shows that there is still a significant gender employment gap among the youth. In this context, this research project's overall aim was to analyse the factors that constrain girls/young women "Not in Employment, Education or Training' (NEET) in Rwanda. The study sought to provide insights into how these girls/young women navigate the challenges they encounter, the decisions and choices they make, and how these may shape what they are able to do or be.  The findings of the study indicate that girls/ young women are the majority in the NEET category compared to boys; (41,4% girls vs 26,5% of boys aged 16-30). More analysis showed that NEET girls increased with age, and that married women are more likely to be NEET than men. Moreover, the qualitative data indicates that NEET girls' life trajectories have been mostly impacted by their family background. Most were born in poor and vulnerable families and experienced major disruptions earlier in life, which include family sickness, death or separations of parents, or unwanted pregnancies. For most this would be a turning point in life, which leads to school-drop out, rejections from families and communities and often increased poverty. Yet, even the NEET girls who had relatively stable lives and even completed school to university level, got married before starting to work and thus ended up as stay-home mums with no paid employment or career prospects. The experiences of NEET girls can thus be attributed to unequal gender norms that lead young women to prioritise marriage over their own careers, due to societal expectations. Moreover, it was observed that girls with disabilities face an extra layer of disadvantage and marginalization from the community. The study makes a number of recommendations to address the issue of NEET girls. Apart from achieving the research goal, this project has had a number of achievements and outcomes. These range from strengthened partnerships, collaboration and networks between UR and GER, stakeholders in districts and Kigali, researchers in TESF Rwanda, Bristol and other Hubs. Besides through these partnerships and collaborations, capacities have been mobilised on all fronts, impacting the different people involved. This project has also had a number of tangible outputs that include: blogs, research tools, policy and programme briefs and a journal article. These plus other written materials that will be produced and shared in the future will contribute to knowledge creation, and remain as a legacy for the project.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Livestock enclosure and the path to sustainability SO16 
Organisation Transparency Solutions
Country Somalia 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: The purpose of this research project was to co-produce knowledge between scientific and pastoral communities about the economic and environmental impact of livestock enclosures, and the possible creation of alternative sustainable enclosures for nomadic rural communities in the Horn of Africa. This research project was informed by five themes: aspirations, decent work, gender equality, poverty reduction and context. Using livestock enclosures (Xero) is an entrenched cultural practice with severe social and environmental consequences in Somalia. The excessive cutting down of trees for creating or repairing Xero has contributed to severe deforestation, leading to unprecedented cycles of drought, by contributing to sustained low rainfall. This has led to the loss of livestock and increased livestock diseases, forcing many pastoralists to migrate to urban areas with high unemployment levels. This research investigated the main problems rural communities face across three districts in Somalia and offers a sustainable solution. This research was co-produced with 21 pastoral community members across three districts in Puntland, who were selected for their significant experience and knowledge concerning nomadic livestock herding. The team collectively worked on the entire research process, including the inception, design, implementation, dissemination, and final report derived from ESD (Education for Sustainable Development). ESD incorporates a new pedagogy of education that seeks to empower people to take up the responsibility of creating sustainable futures for themselves and their communities.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Nilgiris Field Learning Centre: Learning & Analysis for Local Adivasis Empowerment IN005 
Organisation Keystone Foundation
Country India 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: In 2013 a group of practitioners and academics mooted the idea to develop a living field course within the ecology, social and cultural context of the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve. This program would encompass mutual exchange between and within researchers, practitioners, students and indigenous people. The diversity of fields and modules of study would open different aptitudes, talents and perspectives and create a new breed of "perceptive leaders." Multidisciplinary approaches will be used to explore sustainable use, livelihood trade-offs, institutional development, relevance/significance of culture and traditional ecological knowledge, payment for ecosystem services, human wildlife conflict management, and biodiversity loss among other sub themes. A decade later this field course has been conducted 8 times (2 years were lost to COVID 19) and brought together faculty (5) and students from Cornell University (30), practitioners from Keystone Foundation (15), local indigenous students (60) to live, learn and dream together of sustainable futures for the planet. The organisation learns from and works with pastoralist Todas, artisan Kotas, hunter gatherer Kurumbas and Nayakas, agriculturist Irulas and Soligas, all of whom make up the unique sociocultural diversity of the Reserve. Education from the field is a prime focus objective within the Foundation to build capacity and empower the local youth towards conservation. To this end, Keystone works with schools on nature education programs and climate change curriculum to encourage youth to become conservation leaders. In communities, the organization trains stewards in methods for ecological monitoring, connects with village elders to promote youth engagement in their communities, and provides fellowships for people to engage with and record cultural traditions of their own. Keystone's involvement in setting up 'Community Foundations' with youth groups in the region also works towards the revival of socio-cultural tradition and livelihood options. Collaborations with academic institutes have resulted in innovative field learning approaches to better understand current issues and suggest solutions. In order to create a place for practice, learning and experiences from a strategic perspective that gives scholars, students and practitioners an opportunity to challenge themselves on how things work on the ground - principally in the field of Ecology, Economy, Development. Here is where one can test and create diverse methods, approaches and importantly listen to what communities have to say. This space of learning and interaction urges one to develop creative solutions and new understanding in biodiversity-rich, highly complex societies with a growing population. A biosphere is a dynamic space where the social and ecological are constantly interacting with each other, there are signs of perturbations that seem to be driving the biosphere to a tipping point as we witness unregulated and unchecked development. How is the resilience of an ancient land like the Nilgiris responding, adapting and continuing? The need to study interactions and learn from ecologically fragile areas is becoming imminent in the face of extreme and unpredictable climate events that threaten the socio-cultural-ecological fabric of a region.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: One Child One Tree RW65 
Organisation University of Rwanda
Country Rwanda 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: The 'One Child, One Tree' (Mwana Tera Igiti) project has made great strides towards promoting social harmony and tackling climate change. 'One Child, One Tree' aims to improve children's relationship with the natural environment; improve children's psychosocial well-being; and strengthen children's sense of belonging to their community. The project's research aims were to evaluate the impact of children's participation on their knowledge, perceptions, connectedness to nature, intrinsic aspirations, and psychosocial well-being; as well as to evaluate the engagement of key stakeholders including teachers, local administration officers, and children. The project has already achieved several significant outputs, including the creation of two children's forests in Kigali and Huye, the development of educational material including indigenous tree species booklets, and the collection of research data from over 500 children. The Minister of Environment, Miss Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya, joined the tree planting celebration in Kigali and playfully discussed with the children the meaning of our slogan 'Our nature, Our Heritage'. This helped to attract strong media attention with appearances on Rwanda National TV and radio, and in two leading journals in the country. The impact of the 'One Child, One Tree' project has been evidenced through pre-post evaluation study findings. In line with our hypotheses, the findings of the study show a significant improvement in children's psychosocial well-being, intrinsic aspirations, and connection to nature after participating in the 'One Child, One Tree' programme. In addition, more than half of the children reported to have dreamt about their tree in the past month and 80% of the children have encouraged other children to also plant a tree. The future plans for the One Child, One Tree project are ambitious and far-reaching. The goal is to make planting trees by young children a global ritual that is adapted to local culture and context. If every child aged 6-7 years old is educated about the culture and biology of indigenous trees and gets to plant a tree in a child forest, we will create a generation of youth who have a lived experience of their connection to nature and to each other. In Rwanda, we continue to work with the Minister of Environment to make the initiative reach every Rwandan child. Please join our movement and plant a 'One Child One Tree' forest in your community! It is not difficult. You can work with schools, religious groups, or other groups where children are educated. Our team in Rwanda can share learning materials and help you with engagement and logistics. Our dream is that, in the end, every child in the world will plant its own tree in a child forest in its community, thus connecting the child to all other children in the world through its connection with nature.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: The meaning of SD in Somaliland SO02 
Organisation Amoud University
Country Somalia 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: Somaliland's environment has been severely degraded due to decades of civil strife, and degradation is still being exacerbated by the lack of a fully recognised Government, lack of adequate law enforcement and global processes of climate and biodiversity degradation. The overall aim of this study was to understand how graduates of Climate Change & Environmental Sustainability (CCES) programme in Somaliland and the public understand sustainable development. The study adopted a cross-sectional-tracer-survey with a purposive and snowball sample of 152 graduates of CCES and CCES related-programmes since 2018 from three regions of Somaliland employed in MoA, MoERD and MoES at the national and the regional levels. The study adopted the co-production strategy which was consistent with the tenets of ESD. Data was analysed thematically and descriptively. The study found that a large majority (98.6%) of the respondents do not have a correct understanding of sustainable development; the common sources of information for sustainable development are formal education (77.9%), media (16.6%) and NGOs (5.5%); and that the major barriers to sustainable development are environmental challenges, bad governance, education based challenges, political and economic challenges. Further, the study found that charcoal production can be stopped through use of suitable and affordable alternatives, extensive education, good governance and employment creation; that a majority (66.45%) of graduates of CCES programmes and other respondents feel that they are doing enough to achieve sustainable development in their respective regions. They are actively involved in NGO projects and programs, capacity building, promoting use renewable energy and the 3Rs - reduce, reuse, and recycle. The status of sustainable development in Somaliland was rated poor across all levels at an average of 70.07% across all respondents. The poor rating arose from a lack of responsible institutions, mass ignorance, poor governance, high charcoal production, use of poor agricultural methods, and high prevalence of retrogressive traditions.  Most graduates of CCES programmes (62.11%) have benefited: they now have better understanding of sustainable development, have new knowledge on environmental management, more understanding of effects of climate change, and better understanding of green energy. The study concludes that there is no official definition or understanding of sustainable development in Somaliland. This will continue to impact negatively on efforts to achieve sustainable development. The study recommends that the government: Provides a local, national and contextualised definition of sustainable development; Mounts a concerted education and create awareness through various media on sustainable development; Develops, implement and enforce policies to ensure achievement of sustainable development in all its dimensions at the grassroots. Improves the CCES programme through hiring sufficient number of more qualified persons; making the programmes more practical; providing adequate modern teaching and learning resources; collaborations and exchange programmes with other universities. Carry out extensive action research on land degradation and desertification, charcoal burning, firewood and alternative energy; drought, climate change and water scarcity; pollution and degradation of air, water, land and social and cultural values; invasive species; land resources management, overgrazing; waste management and natural disasters.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: The utilisation of school food gardens as educational transformation agent to achieve community-wide sustainable livelihoods ZA40 
Organisation Abertine Rift Conservation Society
Country Uganda 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: The School Food Garden (SFG) project aimed to establish gardens at three schools in Siyabuswa. The SFGs pedagogical potential was explored together with teachers. The project sensitised the different school communities about SFGs and the need for sustainability. Teachers explored gardening techniques and became engaged in rethinking their teaching strategies by integrating outside spaces like SFGs. Teachers envisaged improvements in their learners' academic performance, as well as increased community involvement in school activities. From this project, the public can learn about the benefits of community-based food projects in promoting healthy eating habits and engaging young people in their education. The project also highlights the importance of involving the broader community in initiatives aimed at improving food security and sustainability. The key findings of the School Food Garden project were that thorough planning is needed when embarking upon the establish of a sustainable school food garden. The project also demonstrated the potential value of engaging teachers, learners, and the broader community in promoting healthy eating habits and sustainable food production practices, aimed at increasing food security. In terms of relationships, the project brought together academic staff from the University of Mpumalanga, teachers, parents, and community members to work towards a common goal. The further expansion of the gardens should increase a sense of working towards a common goal by taking ownership of the gardens. The key outputs/outcomes of the project were the establishment of school food gardens, the development of teacher capacity in gardening, and the potential improvement of learners' academic performance and behaviour. The project also raised awareness about the importance of sustainable food systems and healthy eating habits in the local community. Overall, the School Food Garden project serves as a model for community-based initiatives aimed at promoting healthy eating habits and sustainability practices among young people. Its success highlights the importance of engaging the broader community in efforts to improve food security and promote healthier lifestyles.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: There is a bee in my balcony': a guide to growing food anywhere you live using illustrated narratives of diverse urban farms IN034S 
Organisation Institute of Rural Management Anand
Country India 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: Cities are major sites of energy, water and food consumption on the one hand and significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions on the other. In view of increasing urbanisation and its adverse socio-ecological effects, a range of initiatives to create sustainable alternatives are being explored. Despite the challenges, a growing school of thought and practice under civic environmentalism aims at generating positive ecological and social outcomes in human-dominated landscapes through participatory environmental restoration and management initiatives. In particular, a growing awareness about food production and consumption patterns, along with an urgent imperative to transition away from industrial food systems, have given rise to a range of small-scale food growing initiatives in urban areas. However, while urban farming initiatives have found wide-scale support through policies and regulations in the Global North, such practices remain limited to non-formal, personal and community-driven practices in the Global South. In India, as urban spaces are rapidly increasing, these extended patchworks of uneven geographies and socio-economic realities intersect with questions of food security and nutrition in fundamental ways. To build alternate imaginaries, the socio-cultural processes underlying the formation and sustenance of food-growing practices in such areas merit more inquiry. This project offers some preliminary insights into the varied motivations, constraints and possibilities animating urban farming practices in Indian cities. Specifically, the explored ideas such as - What kinds of practices and perspectives are embedded in urban farming initiatives in India? Furthermore, how can greater civic participation be nurtured through these practices and associated ideas? Based on 15 interviews with urban farmers across six cities, a qualitative analysis of their responses and experiences illustrates ways in which their perspectives and sensibilities evolved in relation to the space being tended to, as sites of recreation, livelihood, well-being, pedagogy and even resistance. Discussions with practitioners suggest that food gardens can potentially scaffold affect-based, collaborative spaces based on social, emotional and physical feedback offered through plant-care practices. Growing edible plants as a practice allows participants to embody the reciprocal relationships embedded in the health of the land, soil and living beings dependent on it. Based on our findings, we argue that community farming can be an important way to motivate people to re-establish connections with the ecosystem. However, sustained transformations in urban spaces and food systems require supportive policies, infrastructure and social acceptability for a wider uptake of such practices and better integration with educational institutions that can serve as experiential and outreach hubs. In our efforts to institutionalise food growing opportunities for youth, we collaborated with a student group called 'Prutha' at IISER, Pune to curate a series of talks, as well as facilitate a one-day workshop on sustainable food systems. The narratives and insights gleaned from varied discussions have led to the publication of an open-source, freely accessible handbook titled, Cultivating Hope: Exploring food growing possibilities in Indian cities in Hindi and English. In conclusion, we emphasise the need to build on convivial structures such as community farming initiatives to traverse the journey from personal motivations to political commitments towards ecological flourishing.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Tipping the Social Learning Scale in favour of Sustainable Land Justice for Women who are Land Dispossessed and those from Mining Towns ZA65 
Organisation 1000 Women Trust
Country South Africa 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: This project sought to explore, enhance and transform the social learning of women in rural and landless contexts who were engaged in agroecology and fishing as a livelihood but faced barriers of hostile industrial companies and an unfriendly learning atmosphere. It investigated the shift in the impact of technology that women experience in mining towns and the resulting socio-environmental impact on their lives. The research inquires how women have engaged and responded to these barriers and used their agency to enhance and build the quality of their lives and create sustainable futures through arts and crafts as well as other income-generation initiatives. Women who attended the training were from rural and farming communities that include coastal and land-locked communities. The researchers uncovered the following: Poverty and unemployment levels are between 40 and 60 percent in these communities as the employment opportunities are mostly geared toward men and many of the jobs are on the high-skill end. Those who cannot access job opportunities are dependent on government social support grants such as child support, disability grants, and pensions for the elderly. Young women often are not able to study further due to a lack of bursaries and they must find a livelihood on the West Coast. There are multiple impacts of mining on women in landlocked and coastal communities including social, political, economic, spiritual, and environmental impacts. The study shows women's voices are largely excluded from decision-making processes that affect their livelihoods and quality of life. This includes a lack of access to information and adequate benefit from the social labour plans of existing mining. The consultation processes around prospective mining applications are inadequate and women do not feel well-prepared to engage in public participation meetings which are poorly set up and often poorly advertised and biased toward mine bosses. Women who live in mining communities are blocked from opportunities. The project supported the building of local layers of rural young women community researchers enabled to expand their life chances. Reflections and Outcome: Findings: The implementation of a feminist participatory action methodology for this co-created project guided and strengthened existing connections and relationships among women from respective communities as they critically discussed their struggles because of corporate mining interests and the impacts thereof on their livelihoods. This research project hoped to strengthen relationships through its commitment to implement aspects of healing, capacity mobilisation, transformation aspects, and educational impacts for all participating communities throughout the research process. Our project was implemented within a very complex existing web of relations, organisational initiatives and networks, and customary practices. We realised early that it was important to integrate and connect positively and affirmatively to cultural expressions and habits and show respect to the people whom we wanted to co-create knowledge with. The research process had to be integrated within these existing processes and social relations, while at the very same time harnessing the transformative instincts and aspirations that the people have in their local settings. The Fisher folk women's group in Doring Bay and the women's forum in Hondeklip Bay had a very specific and close-knitted culture of working and getting together and it was needed to connect friendly to their context so as not to be imposing with our process. In Port Nolloth, women felt more isolated and experienced exclusion and inequality in a very stark way to the point where they were instructed in cooperative meetings of fisherfolk that they could only be in meetings, but not participate meaningfully. We had to carefully manage party political dynamics so that it does not negatively influence the research process. For example, changing the way that we worked with one of the community leaders that we wanted to foreground as an environmental activist and relegated her to a less influential role in the project, while still drawing on her rich knowledge of the environmental context without giving space to influence processes. Connections and relationships were also strengthened when women expressed their concerns about power dynamics (e.g., community men, government officials, mining companies) and the impacts on their livelihoods. For example, in Hondeklip Bay, in the Northern Cape, it came to our attention that mining companies are filled with empty promises. They promised to create businesses for young people, build community facilities, and commit to development that will better the livelihoods of people. However, these very mining companies are full of empty promises and are conducting mining consultation meetings to make decisions to mine the area. The women are concerned about the further structural violence and impacts that mining will have on their community and in their lives. What this meant for the project, is that researchers needed to address the direct concerns of the women and provided them with information and guidance as requested in their training sessions. Conclusion: There are multiple impacts of mining on women in landlocked and coastal communities including social. political, economic, spiritual, and environmental impact. The study shows women's voices are largely excluded from decision-making processes that affect their livelihoods and quality of life. This includes a lack of access to information and adequate benefit from the social labour plans of existing mining. The consultation processes around prospective mining applications are inadequate and women do not feel well-prepared to engage in public participation meetings which are poorly set up and often poorly advertised and biased toward mine bosses. Women who live in mining communities are blocked from opportunities. The project supported the building of a local layer of rural young and adult women community researchers enabled to expand their life chances.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Uncanny Lore: transgressive learning in the legal sovereignty of Indigenous legal practitioners for sustainability and climate action ZA21 
Organisation Rhodes University
Country South Africa 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: The Uncanny Lore project investigated transgressive learning approaches and situated itself in the thematic area of Education and Sustainable Livelihoods with a contribution to climate action through extra-legal approaches. The main aims were to seek inspiration, guidance and transgressive social learning from indigenous arts and lore, that could contribute to the creative collaborative development of a new legal pedagogy that is grounded and embodies practices for heritage law and policy. Our findings encompass both the research methods and methodology, as well as an analysis of the research. We worked collaboratively and creatively, with a team of researchers and community members from across a range of fields and backgrounds, foregrounding creative practice as a key component of our methodology. This element of creative practice meant that the research was open-ended and responsive: we did not have a set agenda of outputs or findings, but merely a guiding principle of engaging meaningfully and ethically with people, their stories, and lived and living experiences, as they arose, within the parameters of our research into legal plurality, customary and living law, as it relates to ancestral land rights for the San people of Southern Africa. The open space, which had to be held for these relationships and stories to emerge, is often a central aspect of creative process, and while it brings with it moments of deep discomfort and questioning, this, together with the collaborative and transdisciplinary aspect, also allows for generative moments where new connections, stories, and findings emerge, or where forgotten or marginalised ones are surfaced. This approach allowed us as researchers to develop honest, caring, and reflective relationships with each other, and also to develop respectful, warm, and trusting relationships with the people in whose communities we spent time. From these relationships we were able to explore fundamentally new approaches to, and understandings of, the legal and cultural issues at play in ancestral land rights. We developed a photographic language that was participatory and empowering, and created strong portraits of women and children in the landscape relating to traditional birth practices and stories, and portraits of girls and young women in the landscape relating to menarche rituals and practices. These have shifted our legal and social understanding of ancestral land rights, to focus not only, as has been done predominantly in the past, on the knowledges and experiences of older generations, but on the role and importance of this for the youth and younger generations, too. This is a key development in our understanding of these issues, and opens the way for further research and understanding. It also opens up new directions in using other human rights instruments, such as The Convention on the Rights of the Child, when looking for the legal tools and discourses that can facilitate ancestral land right claims. These portraits also form an important aspect of our research into the role of art and creative practice in working with Levinasian ethics, and how this relates to legal theory and practice.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Universities as Sustainable Communities ZA10 
Organisation University of Free State, Bloemfontein
Country South Africa 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: This project used participatory storytelling to co-create knowledge with university student activist groups on what it means and what it takes to build sustainable communities in the context of one historically white South Africa University (The University of the Free State, UFS). This project has changed our perception and understanding of what student activism is and why it matters in creating sustainable university communities. We have gained an acute understanding of the worldview/perspectives/realities (cosmovisions) that a selected group of student activists have reason to value and promote for themselves and others. We have learnt that these students perceive the world as full of challenges, due to individual and collective experiences of systematic oppression (of the racial, epistemic and economic dimensions) which also speaks to the experiences of communities around them (both home communities and university communities). In our early workshop discussions the students spoke of how 'they have seen the bad in the world' and explained that they choose to respond to different public 'bads' (instead of being passive or indifferent) through activism and leadership. In this way, activism (e.g. through debate and dialogue, through writing; student political representation on campus, or through lobbying etc.) and leadership (which is developed organically rather than deliberately, and availing oneself to do something) is for the students a valued way of being and doing in the world, but particularly in the university. They value being leaders and being activists or doing leadership work and doing activism, because it enables them to orient their efforts towards changing what they see as wrong and as causing suffering /oppression to communities and themselves.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Using arts-based approaches to dialogue issues of SD RW50 
Organisation Institute of Research and Dialogue for Peace
Country Rwanda 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: This project started from the assumption that policies and programmes developed in relation to poverty reduction and gender promotion are often viewed and evaluated from the perspective of adults. Thus, the voices of young people are silenced or undervalued. Therefore, the project sought to deconstruct the adult dominated narratives by elevating voices of young people in order to have a comprehensive picture of the problem at hand. It aimed to empower high school learners to detect and research issues of sustainable development in their communities, and to discuss and express these problems with members of local existing arts clubs with a view to bring these concerns to the attention of policy makers using-arts based approaches such as music, dance, drama, and drawings. The study used participatory action research and art- based research methods and achieved a number of outputs. The project specifically sought:  1) To empower high school learners to research issues of sustainable development (poverty reduction and girls' access to education) in their respective communities; 2) To create safe spaces in the form of clubs for young people and existing/local indigenous cultural artists to discuss and express researched issues of sustainable development; 3) To use existing local cultural forms and practices as a dialogic tool between high school learners, arts clubs and policy makers in discussing issues of sustainable development in the community; 4) To produce a youth-led national policy brief around key issues identified in relation to obstacles to poverty reduction and girls' access to education; and 5) To draw lessons learnt from the use of arts-based approaches to dialogue issues of sustainable development.  A number of lessons were learnt from the use of arts-based approaches to dialogue issues of sustainable development. They include the following: Art constitutes a powerful tool for young people to explore and express obstacles to poverty reduction and girls' access to education. Young people who might not be comfortable writing long essays and reports, find it easy and convenient to put their ideas in various art forms such as music, dance, drama, painting, drawing, poetry, etc. The project allowed teen mothers to regain a sense of self-worthy and self-esteem. They felt valued and got the opportunity to get reconnected to the school. We learned that words often cannot adequately capture the complexity of difficult situations such as poverty reduction and girls' access to education. The idea is that arts constitute a successful intervention for example for young people who may not have a varied and rich vocabulary to express their feelings, thoughts, and imaginations about sustainable development goals. In other words we argue that arts-based methods can open a back door to the inner self, bringing to light important concerns from people, which they cannot put into words. Our project shows that engaging with arts in research allows multiple forms of expression and uncovers deep realities which could not be otherwise known. Arts-based methods unlock participants and allow them to have access to deep and inner stories that could not be otherwise known. Our project shows that arts-based approaches deserve credit because of their therapeutic, restorative, and empowering qualities and this was seen mainly among teen mothers who participated in our project.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description TESF Commissioned project: Water mapping as community-based activist research and education for the water commons ZA38 
Organisation Rhodes University
Country South Africa 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This work was commissioned by the University of Bristol but the project was undertaken by the award holder. The University of Bristol's contribution was in coordinating the funding and providing all necessary support pre-award and post-award. The University of Bristol also managed all reporting including mid-term and end-of-project reporting.
Collaborator Contribution The award holder undertook research and related activities as one of 67 commissioned projects in the TESF network. As summary of activities and achievements are as follows: In South Africa, access to water is getting worse as urban water governance strategies do not correspond with lived realities. Increasingly, water is being managed in commodified ways resulting in exessive use by the upper and middle classes. In this project, with the support of the African Water Commons Collective (AWCC), 110 households who are part of 13 Water Action Committees (WAC) in neighbourhoods in the Western Cape mapped their daily water use for between 4 to 7 days. The water was largely mapped by women which is significant as we find women are the members doing the work that involves water use (Laundry, cooking, bathing children etc.). The mapping process was piloted and refined by 15 AWCC organisers prior to implementation with WACs. This enabled us to think through methods for making documenting convenient, and to examine some of the elements that would make the process challenging. The water mapping process was intimidating but organiser-members of the African Water Commons Collective supported the process and cultivated a sense of achievement amongst people who mapped their water. Findings relating to process: (i) People can work together to understand their household water use and reflect on whether they are using water 'wisely', not only for 'saving' water but using enough water for a dignified life. (ii)Working with concrete realities of water use can be a basis to develop voices and make connections to other parts of life: health, jobs, industry, water policies. This process can powerfully counter the dominant narrative which frames citizens as "water wasters" and surface more rigorous conversations about how we are using our water commons. (iii)Mapping household water also provides a foundation from which to imagine the alternatives - alternatives that are informed by dispossessed urban dwellers, strongly grounded in a critique of the present water policies and how they are exclusionary to poor/dispossessed urban dwellers. Water for life Through co-creating, implementing and reflecting on a common activity, community education spaces can be strengthened through a combination of relationship strengthening, capacity development, and sense making that is grounded in concrete 'livid' experience. People build relationships and can learn together. People who are organised around a common goal are well equipped to undertake research processes but also research processes contribute to the organisation and relationships between people fighting for the water commons. Research and organising go together. Findings relating to our data: (i)55 of the households who mapped their water use less than 50 litres per person. Many households reported using amounts for drinking and bathing that are inadequate for a dignified life. (ii)Barriers to water access are complex but knowable in working class neighbourhoods in South Africa. They include: fear of high bills, pressure to save water, having to collect water from far distances, having to dispose of grey water in underserved/informal neighbourhoods, overcrowding in households without enough time or space to bath. (iii)Different housing types require different water use strategies, resulting in different amounts needed for the same water use type. (iv)Housing type and local infrastructure have an impact on amounts of water used for daily needs- for example: due to water pressure in an RDP settlement 60L is needed to flush a toilet. (v)The points above call for more nuanced approaches to water provision in cities with housing conditions such as Cape Town. This mapping process showed us that many people are not using the water that is needed to live a dignified and healthy life. This research has shown that there is a need for messaging about health-related reasons to use water well rather than conservation and financial related reasons for saving it. Before policies that threaten to reduce household water to a trickle flow (CoCT, 2021) are implemented, we need to ensure people who do not have enough water to live a dignified life get more water. The AWCC is working on a campaign to support the organisation that enables people to defend the water commons.
Impact See TESF project webpage above for all publicly available project outputs.
Start Year 2021
 
Description C-19 engagement and dissemination events 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact Various national events were organised by the four country hubs to share findings from each hub's C-19 research. The events were held in spaces open to policy makers, participants, other stakeholders and media. These were held as a mixture of in-person events, where appropriate, or online activities.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022
URL https://tesf.network/resources-library/?resource-category%5Bcovid-19-related-research%5D=covid-19-re...
 
Description Establishment of Communities of Practice (CoPs) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact TESF has established four research communities of practice (CoPs) in order to foster relationships between funded projects and the wider network, to provide spaces and structures for mutual support across projects and hubs, to provide a cross-national forum for sharing knowledge and experiences about research, and to support the development and synthesis of high-quality findings with respect to TESF's substantive foci. Each of the CoPs focuses on one of the following themes: sustainable cities and communities, sustainable livelihoods, climate action and decolonising research. Project teams have welcomed the opportunities offered by the CoPs, and have enthusiastically taken up the offer of taking on the coordination and facilitation of their CoPs. Members of the first CoP that took place, created a facebook group, set future meeting dates and identified volunteers for coordinating future meetings.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Four stakeholder engagement workshops in partner countries 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Workshops undertaken in Rwanda, India, South Africa and Somalia/ Somaliland to launch TESF but also to engage with a range of stakeholders to get feedback on priorities that should appear in the funding call for plus funded projects.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://tesf.network/resource/rwanda-engagement-workshop-videos/
 
Description Hub-level and network-level MEL review 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact Our MEL consultant, Dr Ash Brockwell, met with the hub leads during synthesis week to reflect on the MEL framework and processes based on their experiences and taking into account feedback received from project teams. Further discussion will be had with the Bristol team to reflect on partnership working in particular, and how policies and processes could be changed/developed to ensure more equiptable working practices.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Launch event 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Launch of Network Plus at the Watershed Bristol. Each partner spoke about the sustainability challenges facing the country and how the project will address these. We had approximately 200 guests from a range of backgrounds including potential applicants for plus funded projects.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://tesf.network/resource/climate-emergency-forum-presentations/
 
Description Meetings of the Rich Synthesis Working Group 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact TESF has set up a Rich Synthesis Working Group in collaboration with EdJAM, another GCRF Network Plus, to address the challenge of synthesising findings from a vast range and number of research projects across their Networks. Following consultations with the leadership teams and ongoing discussions with researchers in both Network Pluses, TESF and EdJAM have established a collaborative working group that provides creative and critical space to learn about synthesis practices and develop a methodology that will help answer the following guiding questions:
• How can we synthesise in rich and meaningful ways that accommodate a range of outputs and findings from approximately 50 short-term diverse projects;
• whilst maintaining the richness of participants' lived experience from across varied contexts to answer the research questions of our sister Network Pluses;
• without reproducing historic inequalities in the division of labour which position Northern based researchers as theorists and Southern based researchers as data collectors?
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022
 
Description Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) onboarding workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact A series of onboarding workshops were run for project teams within their hub country to welcome them to the TESF network and to introduce the MEL framework which project teams will be reporting on at the midpoint and at the end of their research projects. The MEL framework provides a structure for each project to consider and reflect on their ambitions, challenges and learning in relation to their research. Research teams are encouraged to follow a four step learning cycle (look & listen, analyse, report, act) while considering five key areas of learning: people and relationships, capacities, knowledge, outputs and sharing, outcomes and legacies.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022
URL https://tesf.network/resource/mobilising-capacities-for-transforming-education-for-sustainable-futur...
 
Description National end-of-project conferences 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact Each hub team organised an in-person event for all project teams within their country including research team members and participants. The main purpose of the events was to facilitate sharing of findings and learnings and to support networking across the project teams. Participants also discussed pathways to impact and ways in which they could develop their outputs.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Production of a MOOC by the India hub showcasing the TESF India research 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The India team is in the process of producing a MOOC that will showcase the India TESF research. The MOOC is principally targeted at education practitioners, trainee teachers, and policymakers.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://tesfindia.iihs.co.in/resources/
 
Description Project kick-off meetings for commissioned research teams 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact Various introductory and meet-and-greet events were organised by each of the four country hubs for research partners who had successful bid for funding via the Call for Proposals. It provided all research teams with an opportunity to network, to raise questions, and to explore common research interests.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Research proposal development workshops and launch of the proposal development toolkit 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact A number of workshops were held (mostly virtual) within each hub country to provide support to shortlisted applicants who had submitted an expression of interest in response to the TESF Call for Proposals (Network Plus commissioned research). To support applicants with the development of their full proposal, a detailed proposal development toolkit was created and shared with all applicants. The toolkit provides guidance on each section of the full proposal form and links to relevant TESF background papers and videos, as well as carefully selected external resources.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description TESF synthesis week 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact The TESF synthesis week in Kigali, Rwanda, provided a critical opportunity for all four country hub teams and the Bristol team to meet and work towards the following objectives:
· Synthesis of data from across the country hubs
· Generation of theoretical and methodological insights to frame our findings
· Critical reflection on processes of equitable partnership working
· Development of legacy, in particular opportunities for impact
· Capacity development
The week was an invaluable opportunity for discussion and dialogue, writing and reflection, facilitated through interactive workshop sessions. Members of the Advisory Group and Leadership Team joined conversations virtually through Zoom at the start and at the end of week to provide feedback on hub presentations and to receive updates on progress with the network's core synthesis report.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023