The Meaningful Engagement Toolbox began as a framework for improving meaningful engagement of human trafficking survivors for a small number of larger, mainstream anti-trafficking organisations. Over time, it evolved into a broader framework for how nonprofits, development organisations, government systems, and funders can improve how they engage people with lived experiences of the issues that they are working on. The current edition of the framework has become a toolbox to guide organisations and people working in the sectors that address social issues on how to better engage impacted communities and the movements that they’ve created.
Outlines the history, theory, and practices that underpin the Collective Threads Initiative’s approach.
Various rubrics, assessments, and planning tools intended to support implementation. Choose the ones that work best for your organization and align best with your work.
Your organisation, your existing collective knowledge, your community, the people you partner with, and the ways you navigate your local political and social climate.
The framework outlined in this handbook might be compared to a handbook on the fundamentals of gardening. How you implement it will depend on your climate and resources, and that will inform the tools that you choose.
Lived experience leadership is when people who have lived experience of an issue — such as human trafficking, gender-based violence, labor exploitation, migration, or race or caste-based discrimination — are leading efforts to address the issues faced by those impacted communities. This can be at the grassroots and community level, within organisations, across regions, or in government or other systems responses.
Not every person with lived experience wants to be in movement leadership. Some just want to live their lives, care for and spend time with their families, and have an overall “normal” life. And not every person with lived experience in movement leadership engages in the same ways or at the same levels. A nuanced framework for lived experience leadership — like that found in our Meaningful Engagement Toolbox — helps guide truly meaningful engagement and lived experience leadership.
Often organisations may have survivors (or other employees impacted by the issues at the core of their work) already working in and with their programs. For survivors and other people whose lived experiences are not readily visible, who can choose whether or not to disclose being part of an impacted group, they may be open about their survivorship. Sometimes, though, organisations will have impacted people among their staff and key partners and may not know.
Ethical engagement means:
CTI has a variety of tools in our Tools Library to support organisations in their co-design practices.
Want to know more about the ins and outs of our Meaningful Engagement Toolbox and the framework it uses? Check out our Toolbox FAQs.
