Good intentions and brilliant ideas are not enough when the context is assumed

Every year, billions are invested in development programmes designed by people who care deeply. But their frame of reference is shaped by a different set of cultural, political, and social realities than the communities they serve.

In some cultures, wisdom. In others, an omen of death. Use the wrong symbol in an education campaign and you lose community trust.

Because interpretation shapes how communities understand trust, authority, gender, risk – and what progress even means.

And communities are not monolithic.

They contain different identities, priorities, power dynamics, and tensions – and competing visions of what progress should look like.

Yet decisions are often shaped by whoever happens to be trusted, available, and already in the network – drastically limiting the perspectives considered.

The deeper contextual knowledge already exists – held by researchers and experts embedded in these communities. But it rarely reaches academic journals to shape discourse, let alone the rooms where decisions are made.

We are building a global community of contextual experts – researchers who combine rigorous subject expertise with lived and field-based understanding of the places they study. Our platform is designed for NGOs and governments working in communities they are not from.

You can access expertise through:

• an open library of research briefs
• one-hour expert consultations with contextual specialists