Creating Trust & Collaboration on a Virtual Network

Reflections from Facilitating CORE Net

Written by Maya Seetharaman, Nitya Kuthiala and Rohan Patankar from the CORE Net Secretariat

CORE Net was established as a community of practice in May 2020 to build upon emergent conversations amongst researchers and foundations following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers and institutions are based in different parts of the world, but working with a focus on India in order to better understand the multidimensional impacts of the pandemic, and assess policy implications on the subcontinent for the future. It was apparent early on that the pandemic was a beast larger than anything different organisations could handle individually (and hence called for a coming together that was more serious than ever before), and also that it was a rapidly evolving one (and hence required the response efforts to be agile and incremental). Consequently, the CORE Net Secretariat was set up to convene these different research groups and amplify their efforts, anchored by India’s leading design thinking consultancy Quicksand. The challenge at hand for us was to create safe spaces for collaboration that would reflect the grounded and emergent nature of these conversations.

While at the beginning, the need to engage remotely with the network appeared to be a challenge, we realised soon enough that this would be the only way for it to optimally exist — to be truly inclusive and reflexive of the way research work is likely to transform in a post-pandemic world. It has been useful that not only are network members already attuned to this format of work, but that they have also demonstrated patience while engaging with this evolving conversation. Over the past five months, CORE Net has brought on board nearly 50 member organisations that are represented by over 170 researchers. They have actively contributed to a web platform (www.corenet.in) that features over 50 projects and over 90 resources (e.g., event summaries and recordings, research decks, policy briefs, etc.), and we have organised over 15 members-only and public gatherings of different scales for the researcher community. Above and beyond this, we have witnessed the starting points of an engaged community of researchers that is keen to participate in this process with trust and openness. As we take a moment to reflect on the role of the Secretariat, the following piece describes how the key guiding principles of CORE Net are operationalised in the activities organised by the Secretariat.

Finding a shared sense of purpose among different stakeholders to maximise impact & minimise harm

The genesis of CORE Net lies in a roundtable that was hosted in April 2020 by the Omidyar Network India for researchers and foundations working on COVID-19 in India. This group shared common concerns around (research) use and user focus, minimising duplication, and improving research practice by learning from others. In the first month, the two key goals of the network were identified, with the intention that they would get better articulated through time, as the network took shape.

The goal towards maximising impact has been defined for both key research stakeholders as well as the communities being studied. The focus towards finding the right audiences for research consumption and improving research uptake has been brought through a range of activities, including partnerships for better outreach, jointly producing stakeholder maps and measurement tools, and more. The goal of minimising harm for research subjects came from an expressed need from the community: to uphold shared values of ethics and equity, especially in a time where several researchers have had to rapidly adapt their tools and approaches from in-person engagements to telephonic surveys. The secretariat has actively worked on listening to the concerns voiced by the community around this and programming discussions through the Ethics Dialogues series and informal coffee hours that capture some of these conversations.

Harnessing self-directed participation & governance

While creating a collaborative platform, we felt it was important to ensure that each member within the community has agency and the ability to participate as much, or as little, as they wish to. There was an identified need to strike a balance between mindful direction and offering a space for open collaboration. Having too little or too much leadership/direction can prove to be a challenge while setting up a community of practice. Recognising that different members have their own research schedules, priorities, and availability across different weeks, CORE Net has been set up with no obligations on compulsory hours, minimum participation expectations, or outputs. Each member can determine their own participation journey and interactivity within the network based on the value they derive from the different activities geared towards learning and networking.

Member participation, we observed, fell across a spectrum, where the interest in collaboration is based on the trust that members have in the process and in each other; something that is also likely to continue building over time. Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that the community was set up on a platform that allowed asynchronous accessibility — whether you are an independent young researcher who has joined the network to learn from others or a domain expert from a well-reputed research organisation with years of work experience, whether you are a silent occasional spectator or an involved enthusiastic member; each has access to the same CORE Net resources, events, and communication channels. ‘Slack’ has been set up as the digital workspace for informal conversations and connections between members, where they are free to join any of the different channels (e.g., Resources, Events, Gender Impact, Nutrition, Frontline Workers, Migration, etc.) or create a channel based on a theme they are working on. This allows for members to engage with, contribute and engage with content at a time of their choosing.

Inclusion of diverse and divergent voices among research efforts

CORE Net has been set up with the intent of being an inclusive community, open to independent researchers, research organisations, and civil society organisations interested in learning, sharing, and building synergies with one another. We work on an ‘Open House Policy’; the only criteria to join the network is undertaking COVID-19 research work in India.

Within CORE Net, we wanted to create spaces of different scales and formats to address specific needs of the members and include underrepresented voices. These include Coffee Hour Sessions, Thematic Working Groups, Ethics Dialogues Series, Member Showcases, and Research Summaries.

• Coffee Hour Sessions are weekly sessions, co-created with network members, for participants to convene informally to share (their studies in a wider forum), exchange (notes, practices, and challenges with other members), and learn (from other relevant research initiatives outside the network). Each session focuses on a new theme, topic, or emergent area of interest from the network. Over the past twelve (with more upcoming) sessions, we have observed members asking questions and sharing thoughts not just over the call, but also engaging in parallel discussions in the comments section.
• Thematic Working Groups are a space where researchers collaborate more deeply towards shared research outputs on a particular theme (e.g., Nutrition & Food Security, Frontline Health Workers). These conversations are intended to include in-depth reflections by members on each other’s studies as well as on the general direction of their collective work.
• The Ethics Dialogues Series are a series of curated public events organized by the CORE Net Secretariat to help create conversations around norms and standards for remote, ethical research through the sharing of knowledge, research experiences, practices, challenges, and innovations around ethics between network members. With each session attended by around 100 participants, these have become the spaces where the network members participate in discourse about better practice that is useful for a wider research community.
• Member Showcases are short video diaries created from 1-on-1 interviews held with specific members, as an attempt to strengthen the community of practice, by gaining deeper insights into the work and points of views of members. These are featured on the secretariat’s Medium Publication and YouTube channel.
• Research Summaries are compiled to bring attention to all the diverse work being done by network members on a particular theme, and then shared internally as well as with key stakeholders.

Every session is open to all members, and recordings and summaries are shared with all members in case they were unable to participate in order to ensure that all members feel included, and does not miss out on an opportunity to learn. Further, events are structured in a manner that they are open to questions and discussions from the attendees. If time does not permit all questions to be answered during the session, they are responded to in the summary document that follows or via discussions that are continued on Slack. Finally, to ensure that each member feels comfortable, these sessions are bilingual, so participants and panelists can communicate¹ in a language of their preference².

Building trusted partnerships among members and stakeholders

Facilitating trusted partnerships between members and stakeholders within CORE Net — which in ordinary circumstances would have taken more time, effort and planning, given the scale of the network — has in many ways been made easier by the current state of affairs. It has brought with it an abundance of kindness, empathy, and sharing amongst people, and has opened in them a strong desire to contribute and collaborate towards social good, which the network has provided a great platform for. While the quick forming of relationships between members has been largely due to circumstances, the deepening and sustaining of these relationships has been possible through some considered and deliberate decisions from the network’s facilitation team.

Since most of the network’s interactions and relationship-building happens online (where building rapport takes more effort than when established in-person), the facilitation team has been extra mindful to use calls, messages, and even emojis wherever possible to create a comfortable digital experience for everyone and to inspire a friendly and collaborative spirit within the community. The team has also been able to establish a digital collaborative workspace through Slack, which can mimic to some extent an in-person conversation and collaboration space for members.

As network members and stakeholders have extremely busy schedules, the facilitation team has been empathetic to their needs by communicating visually and concisely the networks requests and expectations from them by informing them well in advance of important events and meetings and taking the extra step to personally invite members to specific events or sessions that connected with their work directly. The team has also been conscious to provide timely responses to member queries through email and other channels of members’ choice including WhatsApp, Zoom, Google Meet, and Slack.

The team has also been mindful of being inclusive to all network members and have been providing representation for members by promoting their events and work within the network’s private and public communication channels. The team also maintains the horizontal nature of communication within the network, which encourages members and stakeholders to break away from formal institutional structures and to more freely access each other’s expertise and support. Every member has access to other members via Slack, without needing to go through anyone else. CORE Net members can leverage such networking and connection opportunities as well as relationships formed within the network, to help their work beyond CORE Net as well.

Conclusion

As facilitators of CORE Net, we see ourselves as only having taken the first step in, as the saying goes, a journey of a thousand steps. A notable takeaway for us, from our journey over the past five months, has been to understand that networks such as this need to be treated as living, evolving entities, which requires taking an agile and reflexive approach in order to to successfully and respectfully address the emergent needs of community members. What members individually, as well as the Secretariat collectively, find valuable and interesting today is bound to undergo changes over the next 6–12 months. Such dynamism will also require us to move beyond creating safe spaces and think more actively about its maintenance and sustenance– what does it take to sustain such safe spaces for collaboration?

There is a need for us to continue engaging members and foundations in open conversations, to discover how members come to view the network and where their values, interests, and engagements come to stand, especially as we make our way out of the pandemic. We have learnt that in order for ideas and collaboration principles to be successfully operationalized they need to be nurtured over time with patience and thoughtful reflection and iteration. As we journey into the future of CORE Net, we look forward to doing just that, so that we continue to remain collaborative, inclusive and, above all, sustainable.

1 - Summary documents are shared in English

2 - Between Hindi and English