The “Public Engagement for Neurodevelopment and Neuroimaging of the Young” (PENNY) team in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health strongly believe that public engagement is an integral part of conducting ethical and contextually relevant research.
Our vision is to build sustainable, respectful relationships with a wide range of stakeholders - including multilateral organizations like UNICEF, policy makers, government departments, non‑governmental organizations, community members, caregivers, and children who participate in our studies. Our approach ensures that mothers, caregivers, community members and all our partners are meaningfully included and that their voices help shape the research journey. We are committed to leveraging community engagement and involvement by co‑creating and ideating alongside key stakeholders, from policy makers, government and non‑governmental organizations, to educators, practitioners, and the families and children who take part in our work, to ensure that our research generates sustained and equitable societal impact.
This website serves as a platform for collaboration on public engagement projects, a repository for guidelines around conducting public engagement work, and a resource hub for public engagement output to be shared and disseminated across South Africa and more broadly.
Our team is focused on various public engagement initiatives including:
"Community engagement is an important anchor of our research and practice in Paediatrics. It reminds us that real progress happens when we listen first, and when children and families help to shape the questions we ask and how we address them. These insights keep our science grounded and purposeful and can give our work its deepest meaning.
This website is intended as a place for information, resources, and examples of approaches to Community Engagement that are shared to help support integration into all aspects of the research journey"
Prof Kirsty Donald
As researchers and practitioners, we do not exist in a vacuum. Our work takes shape through the lives, experiences, and aspirations of the people and communities we serve. To make a meaningful contribution to society, we must engage openly, listen deeply, and build together with those realities our research seeks to reflect.
True engagement begins by bringing communities, caregivers, policymakers, and partners into the conversation from the very start. Together, we shape research agendas and identify opportunities that are grounded in local contexts, histories, and hopes for the future.
Research is not something we do to communities, but with them. By sharing knowledge, building capacity, and creating space for mutual learning, we strengthen the quality, relevance and impact of our work.
Engagement does not end with data - it extends into action. By joining forces with community leaders, service providers, and policymakers, we can translate insights into real-world change, shifting power so that communities have agency and ownership in shaping the solutions that affect their lives.