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Community dialogue

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In November 2017, three days of consultations with community leaders were held in three different sites along the Napo River, bringing together over 80 people from 21 communities. These meetings and workshops were shaped around an initial overview of the GAP project, some basic education and skills training in GBV, and group work to define the GAP project ethical guidelines. Communities were represented by their governors, municipal agents, leaders of social programs such as Programma Juntos, lay-midwives, health workers, teachers, and parent representatives.

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Establishing ethical principles

 

We ran a series of three one-day workshops for community leaders, health promotores, and parteras (lay midwives) to discuss the GAP Project and identify a set of guiding ethical principles for engagement with the communities. The workshops consisted of:

 

1. An introduction to the GAP project 

2. Basic gender violence, human rights and leadership training

3. Presentation from a representative of each community on:

   1. Current laws or rules against gender violence

   2. Referral systems for women who have experienced violence

   3. A plan for ensuring a safe space for victims of violence during the project

4. Creation of location and context-specific ethics guidelines

   1. Discussion of challenging ethical case studies with each group

   2. Use of the Nominal Group Technique to refine ethical principles and guidelines

   3. Agreement of ethics guidelines for GAP project

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Community Ethical Framework 

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In the above consultations, we established a list of 30 guiding ethical principles for our work, including respect, privacy, love (cariño), service and honesty. These were defined through group brainstorming activities, open discussion forums, and community prioritisation exercises. 

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