WHAT IS PIVOT?

The Pivot Collective is a collaborative non-profit organization focused on improving knowledge translation between research, engagement, policy and practice. Pivot, which is based in South Africa, operates as a collective of researchers, artists, and activists who bring diverse multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral experiences together towards the common goal of building youth- and community-led research and engagement in the global South. 

As a research collective, our core mission is to shift existing hierarchies of knowledge and power in global health and development towards a more equitable distribution. Our collective work aims to support people experiencing marginalization or living in contexts of adversity (including young people, women, and those living with chronic illnesses) to tell their own stories, define what matters to them, and communicate these learnings to wider audiences of researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Aligned with this broader mission, most of our current work centers around the themes of sexual and reproductive health and mental health, and their intersections with broader issues of social justice in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. 

Through our research and writing, public and community engagement, facilitation and training, and other creative projects, we aim to disrupt dominant narratives about health and wellbeing and challenge existing forms of knowledge production and translation. To do so requires us to work differently, to de-center where and how we locate and conceive of research, knowledge production, and engagement. We do this in part by challenging and supporting health researchers, humanities and social sciences scholars, and health and development practitioners and policy makers to question their own assumptions and to engage with issues of marginalization and justice more explicitly in their own work.