Participatory Research in Bangladesh: Empowering Communities Through Collaboration

In Satkhira, a district in southwestern Bangladesh near the Sundarbans, communities have long faced the relentless impact of intensifying cyclones, tidal surges, and flooding that force families to grapple with difficult choices about their future. For many, migration—either within Bangladesh or across the border into India—has become a necessary survival strategy.

“Since my birth, I have continuously faced the problem of salinity and other disasters,” Ashiqur Rahman, a community researcher in Satkhira, said. “There is a proverb in our area, ‘As the water grows saltier, life burns with fire.’  We have grown up in this environment, but how can we overcome it? Every month, there comes a disaster.”

The challenges in Satkhira are not just environmental but social. Displacement fuels tensions—land disputes arise as families move inland in search of higher ground, and social bonds are strained under economic stress. Women, often left behind when men migrate for work, face heightened vulnerabilities, taking on additional burdens while navigating safety concerns in flood-prone areas.

To better understand these dynamics and inform mitigation efforts, the Center for Peace and Justice, or CPJ, at BRAC University has conducted research into the intersections of climate disruption, displacement, and cross-border dynamics. CPJ is a long-term research partner of The Asia Foundation, or TAF, leading work in Bangladesh to examine the difficulties experienced by communities in the country’s fragile border regions. This work is part of the UK-funded Cross-Border Conflict: Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) program, which TAF has led since 2018.

Last fall, I traveled to Satkhira to capture CPJ’s research process through a short documentary film as they collected stories of the community using innovative, participatory research approaches.

Moving from Research to Engagement

Participatory research is more than a methodology—it’s a way of engaging communities. Rather than being an extractive process where external researchers come in to gather data and leave, this approach aims to build long-term relationships and involve community members in every step of the process, from designing questions and conducting interviews to analyzing data. This ensures the community’s voices are not only heard but central to the entire process. In addition, local actors are included in validation processes through a community feedback system. CPJ first used this research approach in the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.

In the Bangladesh-India border region, CPJ recruited two groups of volunteer university students from the community to be researched, referred to as “community researchers.” The project empowered community members to play a leading role in research not just as subjects, but as co-researchers. As insiders, they provided insights into the community’s environment and cultural sensitivities, advising on the most appropriate and effective ways to interact with locals.

Community researchers were deeply committed to documenting the changes and challenges their communities faced and finding ways to navigate obstacles in the field.

When relentless rain swelled the Kholpetua River, crossings of the river became difficult and inconvenient. Rather than asking participants in Gabura Island to cross the river, the community researchers decided to travel to meet them instead, volunteer researcher Hafizur Rahman explained to me as the team loaded into small boats.

“We often have to deal with bad weather and find different ways to reach this place,” he said. “Sometimes, communication gets tough because there are frequent network issues, so we have to use different methods to get in touch with people. The communication system here is really poor.”

And communication is essential, because researchers endeavor to conduct interviews when participants are most receptive, available, and safe.

Building Trust Through Community Engagement

The old woman’s voice conveyed a mix of curiosity and skepticism as she approached one of the community researchers during the visit to Gabura Island.

“What will you give us?” she asked.

A community researcher, a young man from a neighboring village, met her gaze with a smile.

“We aren’t here to give out things,” he said. “We’re here to study how our community deals with the cyclone that strikes us every year and what are our needs.”

The woman sighed, shaking her head. “So many NGOs and INGOs have come here, take our stories, but nothing ever changes,” she said.

The researcher nodded, understanding the exhaustion of answering questions and giving interviews without seeing real results. He then explained: “Providing goods is only a short-term fix. This research is about informing our government about our problems, so we may be able to create long-term solutions that will bring change to our community.”

Trust was not given freely. It had to be earned, through presence and patience. One of the most profound aspects of participatory research I observed is the relationships it fosters. Over the course of this project, the researchers connected with the participants, spending time not just gathering data, but building real bonds. 

“Usually, in research we visit a place for about 10 or 15 days and spend a lot of time with each respondent,” Mohammad Zubayer Islam, community researcher coordinator, told me. “This research has been going on for a long time [one year], so we had to communicate with them almost every day to help them feel connected to us. I think this is a really beautiful side of research: getting connected to people. That way, the respondents can speak freely.”

This sense of trust is particularly vital in a place like Gabura Island, where local communities have been historically marginalized. The act of being heard can be powerful, providing the respondent with a moment of visibility, Rahman noted.

“People here are facing difficulties in their economic, personal, and social lives,” he said. “People have appreciated us when we wanted to convey their messages through research.

“Among the respondents, there was an elder who started to cry uncontrollably as they spoke about their sufferings,” Rahman continued. “She said: ‘There has never been a person who asked about our sufferings. Now that we are able to express our feelings, I feel the pain is going away.’”

Collective Reflection and Learning

After the data collection process, the community researchers gathered for group reflections. These sessions were critical, not just for analyzing the information they had gathered, but also for discussing their own experiences as local researchers.

They talked about the data that couldn’t be captured using conventional research methods—the emotions, the unspoken dynamics, and the deeper meaning of the stories they were hearing. These reflections became part of the data itself, adding layers of context and insight that would be inaccessible to an outsider.

A Lasting Impact

Participatory research isn’t just about the findings; it’s about the process. It’s about building trust, forging relationships, and building the skills and capacity of local communities. In Satkhira, this approach gave people the opportunity to tell their own stories and participate in a process that could lead to change that is meaningful to them.

Tasnia Khandakar Prova, lead researcher, said it best: “Put the community at the center—not just in the questions we ask, but in the answers we receive and what we do with them. Research should do justice to the people we speak with. Their stories need to reach a platform where they can make a difference.”

In Satkhira, this approach has done more than collect data—it has sparked conversations, built trust, and given communities a sense of ownership over the knowledge being produced. In the process the research became not just about the community but driven by the community itself.