Making dignity a shared lens

A central focus of our work this year has been to intentionally build and nurture an internal culture of dignity. A key element of this needs to be how IDinsight’s projects are built and implemented. It is in our projects that a crucial part of our commitment to dignity becomes a tangible reality. This article reports our progress on that work.

From advisory to ownership

Previously, our model for integrating dignity into projects relied primarily on consultations. When project teams encountered a challenge or identified an opportunity related to dignity, they would reach out to the Dignity Initiative team for advice.  This approach was valuable. It ensured that expert, nuanced guidance was available and helped plant the seeds of dignity-centered thinking within teams.  However, it also positioned the integration of dignity as a specialized task, something to be “added on” rather than a lens to be universally applied. After a few years, we found we were giving the same advice again and again, rather than progressing to new levels of depth of understanding of dignity. We also found that our availability was inconsistent – a dignity lens was more likely to be incorporated when our team had more time.

To deepen and sustain our commitment, we knew we needed to evolve our model of organisational change. We are now in the process of shifting from this centralized advisory model to one that fosters ownership and leadership directly within our project teams. The core idea is that integrating dignity cannot be looked at only as a process improvement. It is a fundamental mindset that should inform how we approach each aspect of our day-to-day work. Our goal is for every team member to feel empowered and equipped to apply a dignity lens throughout their project lifecycle.

Turning mindset into practice: Our key initiatives

With this renewed focus on team ownership, we revisited our internal project work and have rolled out a series of strategies and initiatives in recent months. Our approach was to ensure we build an environment, and so we have tried to offer spaces and resources required for team members to actively reflect and act on dignity related ideas and activities within their work.  We began this process by doing an extensive mapping exercise, mapping the project lifecycle for key ‘Dignity Hotspots’ and interviewing project teams. We identified the critical stages and decision-making points where a consideration of dignity could have the most significant impact.

• Assessing relevance: The first challenge many teams faced was a confusion at to when they should actively consider a thorough dignity integration in their projects. Once this decision was made it was still unclear what kind or level of dignity integration suited their particular project contexts. To help teams answer these questions, we decided to build tools and integrate them during the initial stages of project scoping and planning. These tools asked questions like:
  • Sector: Is the project in a sector with a traditional focus on dignity (like Health, Human Rights, or Social Protection)
  • Program Participants: Are the program participant groups facing systemic marginalization or high power imbalances?
  • The Interactions: Will the core interactions involve collecting sensitive personal data or take place in vulnerable or stigmatized settings?
  • Harm: What are the potential harms if things go wrong?

The teams use these reflections to align on high-impact dignity activities for their projects. This agreement subsequently informs the selection of the appropriate level of dignity integration from the categories below.

• Empowering teams with a self-led Dignity Workshop: One initiative this year is a self-led workshop toolkit we designed for project teams. This was designed to replace the consultative process from earlier. Instead we now encourage teams to use this toolkit to host an internal team workshop on dignity in their projects. These workshops provide a space for deliberate discussions around dignity and its challenges within the project. It should help teams identify concrete ways to uphold participant dignity and create a shared actionable commitment that guides their work throughout the project lifecycle. We also made all our resources accessible on our internal knowledge hub and developed a course for onboarding new staff about the Dignity work at IDinsight. These resources should help prepare participants for a successful workshop engagement and later implementing key activities linked to dignity. We are currently gathering feedback and data on their use.
• Building Targeted Tools and Resources: Based on the feedback collected from teams we are creating a suite of practical tools and resources tailored to each stage of their work. Whether it’s a format for meaningful consent in research, setting our standards for participatory research approaches, a guide for respectful communication of our findings, or a timely blogpost on dignity in AI, these resources are designed to help teams confidently navigate complex situations that might arise in their projects, without additional bespoke support. We released a few of these tools publicly for general use by external teams too. These include:
  • Dignity Measurement Guide : A comprehensive guide for teams and researchers who are looking to measure dignity in their projects or for academic purposes.
  • Dignity Self Assessment Tool: A quick survey questionnaire that helps organizations reflect on how well they are performing in relation to dignity best practices.

Conclusion: A shared journey of learning and growth

Embedding dignity into our projects is an ongoing journey, and we recognize that we do not have all the answers today. We will learn from the data about the use of these tools in the coming months. What matters most is the willingness to listen, learn, and adapt. Our experience this year has underscored that while articulating commitments to values like dignity is important, it is not sufficient on its own. Being deliberate and intentional in driving change has opened new pathways and perspectives, helping us rethink how we approach our work. Ultimately, this is a shared journey, one we are hoping to carry forward together with empathy and humility.