Community Takes the Wheel: Research Co-Design, Implementation, and Evaluation with Impacted Community
In 2008, Witnesses to Hunger began as an advocacy and research project of Drexel University’s Center for Hunger Free Communities. In 2018, a WtH chapter was formed in New Haven, CT and remains a collective of community members with lived experience in hunger and poverty that partners with universities, researchers, community-based organizations, and other collaborators, including the Coordinated Food Assistance Network (CFAN). Many WtH members are lifelong New Haven residents who grew up and still live in the neighborhoods where the struggle with food insecurity is a daily reality. Despite our fighting for decades so that our own children, grandchildren – and all children in New Haven – can have access to the healthy and nutritious food they need to thrive, hunger persists in 2022. WE WON'T GIVE UP, BECAUSE WE CAN'T GIVE UP. During this session, Kimbery Hart and Susan Harris from Witnesses to Hunger - New Haven and Annie Harper from Yale University share more about ways in which your organization can address equity when community members with lived experience 'take the wheel' in research and advocacy efforts -- and the ways in which you and your organization can creatively support and partner with community.