Community-based research is empowering to local communities. Instead of external experts coming in to identify what a community lacks and needs, it locates knowledge generation at a local level.

• This gives more control to the people who are actually living the experience, and their engagement with pinpointing problems and finding solutions ensures that projects and their impact are relevant and sustainable into the long term.
• The approach moves away from defining a community by its deficiencies; instead it seeks to identify its assets and build on those. This impacts the way people feel about themselves and about their future.
• The use of participatory methods helps to break down barriers between people. Relationships between people essentially affect a community’s ability to collaborate and to bring about change, and so a people-centred approach that creates and strengthens positive channels of communication is foundational to lasting change.