Background
The case
Conceptual framework
Methods
Participants and recruitment
Data collection
Data analysis
Basic themes | Organising themes | Global themes |
---|---|---|
*Building on PROJECT-1 *Expanding structure | Partnership background | Context |
*Understanding the mission of the project *Vision of the project *Institution gains from the project *Expected outputs *Personal learning and goals | Mission | Inputs |
*Implementing partners *Supporting partners | Partner resources | |
*Funders and funding | Financial resources | |
*Role in fulfilling the mission | Input interaction | The collaborative context (Throughput) |
*Roles and responsibilities *Leadership *Leadership in the implementing institutions *Teaching and supervision tasks *Research tasks | Production tasks | |
*Team meetings *Admin tasks *New administrative role in northern institution *Practical and contextual challenges in communication | Maintenance tasks |
Ethical considerations
Findings
Context
Partnership background
a lot of things in PROJECT-1 were done on a fairly ad hoc basis… we had meetings here and there quite often, but people didn’t always turn up… It was… sort of normalized that if you have something else to do, then you would not go to the PROJECT meeting (Participant 8, SP).
… S2 received an extension budget to develop a e-Learning system. And we did just before Covid pandemic and the system helped the school to continue with delivering teaching and courses remotely (Participant 10, IP).
“… since our accountant, is not that strong in the English, it was a bit complicated and we had to write rewrites [of reports]… we had some troubles like spending some of the money that we requested” (Participant 7, IP).
Before in PROJECT-1, they gave the responsibility to each south partner, but now they have given it to the N1 partner to coordinate everything that happens in the project when it comes to administration, like the money transfer and all of these things (Participant 1, SP).
“… a set of N1 students will come and join students in Country S3 and Country S2 to see what learning opportunities are there from that process, it will be quite interesting”.
“And as I see the old participants who have been working, they are committed. Each site wants to make sure that they attain their goals” (Participant 4, IP).
I have research ongoing, I have platforms that can give access to data via other government sources and… they can access the information they need for their research projects (Participant 12, IP).
Inputs
Mission
… to establish a strong collaboration for improving nutritional epidemiology, research and education in nutritional epidemiology in Country S2 and Country S3… so improving nutritional epidemiology research and education in both countries (Participant 10, IP).
And I think, looking back to the kind of call from the donors, it’s that building, that the higher education, which is the main objective of, of FUNDING. And by that I think we have succeeded in PROJECT-1, and the hope that we can succeed in PROJECT-2 in kind of building this master, and PhD capacity (Participant 3, SP).
… we all want the project to do well, and that we all do have a fairly common vision into as to where we’re going and that we’ve worked together for all this time, not Country S3, but the other people without any conflict, really (Participant 8, SP).
… my gains are two-fold… I do have a lot of data, some are redundant, that are sitting here, then that would benefit a lot from having somebody manipulate, model, and give us more information on it, so that’s one. I will have hands on local information on what is happening on the ground in terms of nutrition (Participant 12, IP).
Partner resources
I think the Country S1 team brings with it, strength in the development of training materials and development of research proposals, development of tools, and those kind of aspects within the research (Participant 11, SP).
Financial resources
… because FUNDER… have changed the way they organize the structure… there was more than half a year delay because of the contractor issues… and think it will maybe take even maybe half a year or a year to have a full circle in (Participant 1, SP).
The collaborative context (throughput)
Input interaction
… with Country S2, I think it will be like the small brother in the group, who is contributing the least, and needs the most guidance, and the local issues I talked about earlier is, adding to this… (Participant 2, SP).
Production and maintenance tasks
Production tasks
In PROJECT-1 we had made the recommendation that we move to mixed methods teaching platform, where one would not teach only face-to-face… but rather use multiple methodologies for teaching and I think that from the workshop its very clear that that’s the way they want to go (Participant 11, SP).
… generating evidence that can address the dearth of evidence, in these countries for policymaking processes to address the nutrition challenges, and together we can also address issues with regard to health and welfare of the society (Participant 5, IP).
Maintenance tasks
I had some delays in submitting reports… but from being a member of those meetings, then I was becoming aware that I was supposed to do this and this… there is a budget, but we were required to prepare some six-month budgets for supporting some of the activities that are being done (Participant 4, SP).
We were like directly responsible over all the things are related to financing, with FUNDER. But now we have to pass through the N1 [institution] which is a very good like way of doing things because actually, they are more accustomed to working with FUNDER agency and it makes things very easy for us (Participant 7, IP).
I think it… speaks to a lack of understanding of culture and norms. And I think that working in a diverse cultural background, diversity of cultural backgrounds, we need to be mindful (Participant 11, SP).