About Us – The Tea Leaf Center

The Tea Leaf Center Co., Ltd. is a social enterprise research and training consulting firm based in Thailand and working throughout Southeast Asia. We seek to shift the balance of power in international development and research toward local organizations, communities and individuals directly impacted by the issues they are working on.

AREAS OF WORK

Building the research capacity of local civil society and community-based organizations.

Support to early-career researchers from Southeast Asia working in civil society

MEAL services focused on creating more effective empowerment and more equitable partnerships

What is ‘Local’?

At the Tea Leaf Center, we define ‘local organizations’ as organizations, formal or informal, that are rooted in the context in which they work, and/or are directly impacted by the issue they are working on. This might be:

geographic – for example, a community-based organization comprised of members of one village or an urban settlement;

issue-based – for example, land rights defenders from diverse parts of a country who work together on advocacy and research; or

identity-based – for example, an organization led by and for people with disabilities, working within the country or other geographic area where its members are based.

CIVIL SOCIETY

RESEARCHER

UNIVERSITY

DONOR

What’s in a name?

All across Asia, people come together to have a cup of tea and talk. They talk about their lives, their communities, and their countries. These conversations spark new ideas. Entire movements are born in tea shops across the region.

We are The Tea Leaf Center because we take the passion and inspiration of these conversations into the real world. That’s why we support the shift of ideas from abstract, tea shop discussions to research projects that result in knowledge to help the community to lead its own change.

VISION AND VALUES

Vision

We envision a world where grassroots experience is valued as much as a prestigious education. Where researchers of all backgrounds work together and learn from each other in an environment of understanding and mutual respect. Where policymakers at all levels have access to and use research rooted in the needs and perspectives of affected communities. Where local organizations take the lead in designing and implementing internationally-funded projects. Where international partners provide financial and technical support in a truly empowering and sustainable manner.

Values

We believe global challenges need locally-led, evidence-based solutions.

We value …

Innovation

Empathy

Solidarity

Integrity

We work toward …

dignity and equity for all people

a fair, just, and sustainable world.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

The Tea Leaf Center was founded on four guiding principles. We believe research should be ethical, connected, accessible, and empowered.

Ethical

Ethical research considers and mitigates potential harms to participants and researchers, ensures that the benefits outweigh the risks, and is designed to be context-specific. Holistic ethics covers not only issues of consent and confidentiality, but context-specific security of participants and researchers, preserving participants’ dignity, and the resilience of researchers through self-care and mutual support to deal with trauma and burnout experienced when researching difficult subjects.

Connected

Connected research informs and is informed by other research, perspectives, and people. We help to ensure local civil society, academics, and independent researchers are connected, share their work, and support each other. The Tea Leaf Center aims to support this value by providing a platform for researchers to connect, identify potential collaborations, and share knowledge through our network. We also engage with visiting researchers and hold events to share ideas and build collaborative partnerships.

Accessible

Accessible research produces outputs that participants, their communities and others can easily find, read and understand. This means user-friendly presentations of key findings in formats that can be easily understand and used. We value accessible outputs by encouraging and supporting our network to create more user-friendly outputs, and working with researchers to develop activities and strategies to return their findings to participants and communities that informed the work.

Empowered

Empowered research means local organizations are able to conduct their own research to a high standard, reduce reliance on external consultants, and improve the credibility and reliability of their research. We support this through mentoring local organizations. Our mentorship program can be done at the same or at a lower cost than hiring a consultant. We work with local staff to train and guide them through the research process. This better reflects their priorities and understanding of the local context to be able to lead their own projects in the future.

OUR MODEL

We don’t seek equal partnerships. Local organizations are on the frontline, therefore they have a greater right to drive research and interpret data than we do. They take the lead, and we help from behind as needed.

We have clients, not beneficiaries. We provide professional services and are accountable to our clients, who set the terms and boundaries of the partnership.

All clients are treated equally, and all clients are charged equitably. We have a sliding scale based on an organization’s ability to pay for our services, and occasionally offer support free of charge when a client cannot pay.

We are a social enterprise. We operate primarily on the income from our research and training services, not on grant funding. However, we may occasionally obtain grants for specific activities, especially the work to support early-career researchers.

INCOME STREAMS (2020)

87%

Research support & MEL projects

10%

Trainings

3 %

Other

>1%

Donors

Where does it go?

free research support,

writing course scholarships,

discussion events and panels,

academic conference assistance,

staff salary,

and overhead,

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PRO BONO WORK

To date the Tea Leaf Center has provide research support as well as low cost or free trainings estimated at more than $27,000 USD.

SERVICES

Our services are divided into three main Areas of Work:

1. Building the research capacity of local civil society and community-based organizations.

The Tea Leaf Center provides research capacity to organizations through customized training and mentorship. We work with client organizations to identify areas where they need support in their research, writing and related skills, and design a program of training and practical implementation to fit their needs. We prioritize long-term partnerships in order to increase the impact of our work.

The Tea Leaf Center specializes in research mentorship. We have worked with secondary-school aged girls in Myanmar to do peer research on the impact of the coup on girls’ education, and with members of Myanmar civil society to research topics including volunteer groups’ humanitarian response to COVID-19 and coup-related humanitarian needs; challenges faced by migrants returning to Shan State after COVID-19; and other topics.

We have also developed an ‘Ethics in Context’ training module that focuses on how to apply principles of research ethics to diverse contexts, with special attention to research that involves vulnerable and/or marginalized populations. We have led this training with community-based health and education organizations on the Thai-Myanmar border; with researchers in Thailand conducting remote research with activists and other high-risk populations in Myanmar; and others.

2. Support to early-career researchers from Southeast Asia working in civil society.

The Tea Leaf Center provides support to early-career researchers (ECRs). In many cases, there are only two paths for local ECRs to take, (a) years of academic study or (b) working abroad in the private sector and INGO fields. In order to support and help build the skills of locally based ECRs, the Tea Leaf Center conducts a number activities that include:

Fellowship program – Fellows in this program may come from diverse work and educational backgrounds. We especially seek Fellows who have the support of a civil society group and anticipate returning to their organization following the fellowship. The program is a minimum 12 month program that aims to develop research skills through on-the-ground, real world, research, and research training opportunities. Fellows work 75% of their time on Tea Leaf Center research and training projects and 25% of their time on independent research with support and supervision from the Tea Leaf Center. Independent research may be topics of a Fellows personal expertise; a project the Fellow seeks out, applies to, and leads; or a project in support of their sponsoring organization with a final product useful to them.

Conference support – A major challenge in regional research is the gap between academic and civil society research work and outputs. One way the Tea Leaf Center helps bridge this gap is to provide conference support and opportunities to civil society groups. This can be done either through conference preparation support, organizing and jointly applying to academic panels, or hosting conferences that provide space for civil society to share their work.

Networking opportunities- The Tea Leaf Center is developing an online networking platform to help connect researchers from Southeast Asia to each other and to research opportunities from our partners and other regional projects. We are building a network founded on cooperation and collaboration between individuals and research groups to share skills, tools, methods, resources, and opportunities.

Online learning platform – The Tea Leaf Center is designing an online learning platform that will help ECRs access more advanced research skills. For many ECRs, formal academic study is the only way to develop. The Tea Leaf Center’s on-line learning platform will focus on providing the next steps to level-up ECRs tools and methods.

Collaboration space – The Tea Leaf Center has a small conference room with a TV and wifi access to support ECRs in need of a meeting space, a safe space for conducting interviews, or simply a space to collaborate with a small research team.

3. MEAL services focused on creating more effective empowerment and more equitable partnerships.

The Tea Leaf Center provides MEAL services to international and local non-profit organizations, focused on projects that support empowerment, capacity-building and equitable partnerships. Through this work, we seek to give evidence-based, practical recommendations for partners to improve their relationships and the effectiveness of their empowerment and capacity-building work.

We prioritize projects that have a strong component of empowerment/capacity-building of:

Activists or human rights defenders;
Vulnerable, at-risk or marginalized communities; and/or
Local organizations or networks (however formal/informal)

And clients that show real commitment to improving relationships with local partners and quality of empowerment initiatives. This commitment may be demonstrated on an institutional or individual level.

Our MEAL work has included evaluations of projects to empower and build capacity of indigenous communities and human rights defenders in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam; and empowerment and capacity-building of civil society organizations in Myanmar, Thailand and the Thai-Myanmar border working on issues including migration, natural resource management, hate speech, digital literacy and access to justice.

CIVIL SOCIETY

The Tea Leaf Center works with civil society. We support local researchers through trainings and preparing them throughout the different steps. We also understand organizations have different needs and capabilities. Therefore, the Tea Leaf Center can step-in at any point of the research where needed and by incorporating your organizations inputs.

MENTORSHIP

For the cost of hiring an external consultant, we can typically help your organization learn to research on your own. We mentor CSOs and others who have received or will receive funding for a research project, but need support in order to improve the quality of their work. Stages of the mentoring process are developed in consultation with the organization.

SKILLS & TRAININGS

We provide modified short research training using targeted workshops on research, from specific methodologies to analysis strategies and report-writing. We can also help with proposal writing and developing research tools.

COLLABORATE WITH US

Like our approach? Do you want to collaborate on future projects? Co-host events such as research talks, discussion panels, network trainings, etc.

RESEARCHER

Are you a researcher, an independent consultant? We are a growing network of passionate independent researchers and trainers. Do you like our model? Do you want to participate in our work?

JOIN OUR NETWORK

Access TLC open calls join forums and collaborate directly with other members on your own projects expand your professional network that includes local and international experts, and to be invited to future Tea Leaf Center projects that match your profile.

COLLABORATE WITH US

Like our approach? Do you want to collaborate on future projects? Co-host events such as research talks, discussion panels, network trainings, etc.

UNIVERSITY

Do you need technical support, speakers on professional research in academic and non-academic settings, or workshops for your conference attendees? We can provide pre-conference services to help your conference attendees prepare their pieces or help you think through diversifying local voice representation.

Connect with us.

CONFERENCE PREPARATION

We understand that barriers can exist for conference participants. We can help support your conference through skills trainings and other workshops for your participants. We can also draw from the expertise of our network of local researchers and consultants to give robust workshops in a variety of areas.

CONTEXTUALIZED ETHICS

Ethics is an important part of research. If your institution does not have an ethics process for research, we can help you design a modified research review processes, or connect you to local institutions.

RESEARCHING IN THE REGION

We can provide cultural and researcher specific orientations for your students. We understand the unique challenges of learning to navigate research as a non-local and can help prepare your students before entering the field. Ethics is an important part of research. If your institution does not have an ethics process for research, we can help you design modified research review processes.

COLLABORATING WITH US

Like our approach? Do you want to collaborate on future projects? Co-host events such as research talks, discussion panels, network trainings, etc. We can also guest lecture (see our biographies) or co-lecture with experts from within our network.

DONOR

Do you want to support the work we do? Do you have grantees that need research support or do you need external evaluation of your projects?

We can assist you.

RESEARCH SUPPORT TO YOUR GRANTEES

There are many challenges that face civil society and researchers. Organizations have different levels of research skills, needs, and donor requirements. We can help your grantees build their organizational capacity to conduct research work- whether they are new to the process and need guidance from start to finish or simply need training assistance part way through.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Sometimes your grantees need to develop their monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems. We can help design and walk them through the process.

We can also provide MEL assistance for you as well, giving professional external perspectives to your work and help you identify challenges and strengths in your projects

DO YOU LIKE OUR WORK?

While most of our funding comes from research the Tea Leaf Center leads, we have some activities that require donor support. In unique circumstances, we provide pro bono support to organizations that have limited resources. This includes activities such as scholarships to the Tea Leaf Center training, early engagement with underfunded research projects, academic conferences support, special Training of Trainers activities to build regional access to qualified research trainers.