Chapter 1: Keeping Community-Based Participatory Research Practitioners Relevant And Effective Through Orientation

The Incheon Declaration for Education 2030: Towards inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all, recognizes “the role of education as a main driver of development and in achieving the other proposed SDGs” (sustainable development goals;World Education Forum, 2015, p. 6). The Incheon Declaration (ID) adopts a lifelong learning approach and is “inspired by a humanistic vision of education and development based on human rights and dignity; social justice; inclusion; protection; cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity; and shared responsibility and accountability” (World Education Forum, 2015, p. 6). The ID reaffirms “that education is a public good, a fundamental human right and a basis for guaranteeing the realization of other rights” (World Education Forum, 2015, pp. 6 - 7). In this chapter, we introduce the work of the Knowledge for Change (K4C) Consortium in general and describe aspects of a community-based participatory research (CBPR) initiative of the South African hub of the K4C in particular. The objectives of the K4C Consortium are consonant with the vision of the ID on the role of education as the main driver of development. The consortium, however, is emphatic in its promotion of the co-construction of knowledge in both formal and informal contexts and settings. The knowledge repositories in communities with which educational institutions engage are an essential component of the education process—knowledge production, dissemination, and mobilization. In this chapter, further indications of the consonance of the ID and K4C will unfurl.