The Associação Brasileira Interdisciplinar de AIDS (ABIA) (or ABIA) is a 36-year-old non-governmental organisation based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Their work is focused on interdisciplinary and participatory research and advocacy related to HIV/AIDS policy, treatment, and prevention and to health and human rights more broadly. ABIA was created during the democratisation process in Brazil in the 1980s. Its work with LGBTQIA+, anti-racist, and feminist movements directly influenced Brazilian political processes around HIV/AIDS policies and treatment, and shaped the global HIV response. Across its work, ABIA’sIts activities are structured around a democratic and participatory approach that centres human rights and sexual, racial, and gender equity.

In 2020, the Brazilian non-governmental organisation Redes da Maré, based in one of the biggest favelas (slums) in Rio de Janeiro, came together with a team of scientists from Fiocruz and the community of Favela da Maré to form a new collective to respond to the emergent COVID-19 crisis. The diverse team, who came to be known as Conexão Saúde, developed nimble and accessible tools to control the rise of the pandemic in a territory of more than 160,000 people.

The Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) is an interdisciplinary natural and social science lab space dedicated to good land relations at Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. CLEAR is a feminist, anti-colonial laboratory, which means their methods foreground values of humility, equity, and good land relations. Equal parts research space, methods incubator, and social collective, CLEAR’s ways of working, from their approach to environmental monitoring of plastic pollution to how they run lab meetings are based on values of humility, accountability, and anti-colonial research relations. As a natural science lab, CLEAR specialises in community-based monitoring of plastic pollution particularly in wild food webs. Equally important to their mission, they aim to “do research differently” through the creation and use of anti-colonial research methodologies.

The Third Eye is a feminist think tank operating at the intersections of gender, sexuality, violence, technology, and education. Created by the organisation Nirantar, Third Eye leverages Nirantar’s three decades of experience producing knowledge for rural and marginalised communities and extends this expertise into the digital realm, creating a feminist learning platform for educators, grassroots workers, policymakers, researchers, and communities across rural, semi-urban, and urban India. Its name is inspired by the pioneering educator Jyotiba Phule, who likened education to the "third eye" through which one perceives the human condition.

Sangath, founded in 1996 by Dr. Vikram Patel and six others, is a Goa-based nonprofit organisation that aims to address the holistic needs of children, including developmental, behavioural, and emotional aspects. Sangath's mission is to promote the overall health of children, adolescents, and families, particularly from underserved communities, while scaling up evidence-based mental health interventions. Its values include respect for community knowledge, building trust through transparency, collaboration with communities, empowering communities in research, and grounding interventions in scientific evaluation.

The Planetary Health Interpretation Centre (PHIC) is an innovative collaborative research centre initiated in November 2020 at the Pakke Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh. PHIC aims to address health inequalities, promote community-based engagement, and explore the connections between public health, wildlife conservation, and the environment. The centre follows an interdisciplinary and intersectoral participatory action research model that involves diverse stakeholders and community members.

The Banyan, founded in 1993, originated as a project to rehabilitate homeless women with mental health issues, evolving into an organisation dedicated to providing health and mental health care for those in poverty and homelessness. The organisation, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, strives to enable access to care through comprehensive clinical and social approaches embedded in a well-being paradigm. The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM) was established in 2007 as a sister organisation of The Banyan. Its work is intricately linked to the mental health services and programs delivered daily by The Banyan. The Banyan and BALM work together to understand and address distress, deprivation, and exclusion from treatment and care and to foster meaning, independence, family, and human rights.

Shujaaz Inc is a network of social ventures based in Kenya and Tanzania that aims to connect young people with the information, skills, and resources they need to take control of their own lives and create transformational change. In response to a prevailing narrative of young people as troublemakers and instigators of violence (as a result of wide-spread post-election violence in Kenya), the organisation emerged in 2010 with a commitment to offering an alternative narrative about the role of young people as changemakers – and creating opportunities for young people to realise this role. Shujaaz Inc works to “inspire, entertain and mobilise” 15-24-year-olds across East Africa by connecting them with inspiring, useful and engaging content that addresses the issues that matter most to them. There are currently three social ventures within the Shujaaz Inc network: Shujaaz, a multimedia youth platform; Mesh, an online community for young entrepreneurs in the informal economy (now spun-out as a sister company); and a new research venture offering hyper-local information and insights from their network of young people across Kenya. The organisation focuses on three major issues that matter for young people: financial fitness, sexual and reproductive health, and governance and community. These issues, which they refer to simply as “sex, money, fun,” are those that they have found matter most to the young people they aim to serve. Other emerging topics (for example, mental health, gender equality, and climate change) are linked to these core themes, ensuring they stay focused on the needs and priorities of young people. Through Shujaaz, the team runs national media for social change campaigns on these emergent issues, using social media analytics to measure and track their reach.

The Napawika U'mukí (United Women’s Network) is made up of 20 Ralamuli women from 10 urban indigenous communities from the city of Chihuahua in northern Mexico. The network emerged in May 2020 when a group of women, concerned about the exacerbation of gender-based violence (GBV) due to the social and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, approached the local Gender Unit of the State Commission of Indigenous Peoples (COEPI) to address the issue.

The Isivivana Centre (https://isivivanacentre.org.za) is a multi-purpose community centre based in the township of Khayelitsha. The Centre was established in 2016 to provide a space for social justice organisations to convene and collaborate and to provide resources to the surrounding community (including a library, cinema and meeting rooms). Development of the Centre was spearheaded by a group of social justice organisations working in Khayelitsha with funding from the Atlantic Philanthropies.

The South African health research organisation Desmond Tutu Health Foundation (DTHF) has its roots in the HIV Research Unit at Somerset Hospital in Cape Town. Led by Professor Robin Wood, the HIV Research Unit was the first public clinic in South Africa to offer antiretroviral therapy (ART) to people living with HIV in the 1990s. The choice to offer access to ART’s a decade before they were available publicly in most of the country was forward thinking and politically challenging, bringing significant attention to the Unit’s work. The HIV Research Unit was incorporated into the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town in 2004. With support from the Archbishop Desmond Tutu the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation was formed.

The Institute of HIV Research and Innovation (IHRI) is a non-profit organisation located in Bangkok, Thailand that implementing HIV and sexual health research and programs. IHRI’s key goals are to provide advanced clinical and implementation research on HIV and other health-related issues, to strengthen the capacity of community health workers and other health care providers to deliver services to key populations, and to foster policy change and advocacy. Over the last 20 years, the success of their evidence-based, person-centred, and community-led approach to key population-led health services (KPLHS) has positioned IHRI as a key player and innovator in infectious disease research and service delivery in Thailand and the Asia-Pacific region.