In 2018, The Accelerating Achievement for Africa’s Adolescents Hub (“Accelerate Hub”) established TAG groups in Kenema, Sierra Leone and Entebbe, Uganda. In 2019, these expanded to the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, and in 2020 to Kisumu, Kenya. Each of these TAGs aimed to:

• Co-generate empirical data;
• Build methodological ‘co-laboratories’ where participatory and arts-based methods are developed and tested in partnership with adolescents and young people (AYP); and most importantly,
• Shift power during the research process.

TAG engages with qualitative, arts-based and participatory methods to gather context-specific information and to explore the subjective experiences and stories of participants. This approach was premised on the belief that when young people are meaningfully engaged in research, the research and resulting policy and programming is more responsive to their priorities and needs.

The first TAG weekend in 2008 gained adolescent input into the Young Carers Study (2009-2012, n=8,500). The group was a mix of prior research participants, adolescents at schools and those recruited through word of mouth. It provided two important foundations for the work of TAG:

• Adolescents stressed the importance of meeting with other adolescents with similar highly stigmatized life experiences, away from their homes.
• They also requested follow-up meetings each year.

Since then, TAGs of 15–25 adolescents have aimed to meet annually in weekend, activity-based workshops. The groups have become multi-generational due to older adolescents having children, with many of the initial participants taking on leadership roles as camp leaders. Due to COVID-19 these meetings were not possible – we therefore started remote engagement in 2020. Reflections, resources and empirical findings on AYP experiences and perspectives from this recent pandemic period are highlighted throughout this page.