Ever attend a conference session and wish the conversation could continue long after the conference ends?
That’s exactly where LEAP Africa and WDI’s Impact Measurement and Management team found ourselves after delivering a session on co-creating innovation for incubators and accelerators through participatory research. We saw an opportunity to keep the conversation going and turned it into a new community.
The Participatory Methods Community of Practice brings together monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL) practitioners, researchers, implementers and funders interested in participatory methods. These include approaches that meaningfully involve program participants and stakeholders in design, data collection, analysis and use.
After just three sessions, the community has grown to 32 professionals from 23 organizations, with around 90% based in Africa. Members are sharing evidence, co-developing practical guidance, and bringing real-world cases to the group to learn from one another.
If you’re a donor, investor, entrepreneur, researcher, or program manager, whose ever asked “How can we meaningfully bring the voices of communities into program design and learning?” this community is for you.
The Participatory Methods Community of Practice was created to build off the energy of a 2025 webinar hosted by WDI and LEAP Africa: Co-Creating Innovation: Advancing Incubator and Accelerator Success Through Participatory Research
The next meeting is Oct. 16. To learn about the latest activities of this community of practice, download notes from the quarterly meetings below.
