Participatory Action Research Leadership Program
Research with the community. Action for liberation.
PARLP is a paid leadership and participatory action research fellowship created by Unapologetically HERS that equips incarcerated women, trans, and gender nonconforming people with the tools to investigate issues impacting their communities, document lived realities, and transform research into advocacy and action.
What is PARLP?
PARLP trains incarcerated people as community researchers. Participants learn to conduct participatory action research rooted in lived experience — research done with communities, not on them.
Participants identify issues, collect stories and data, analyze patterns, and create action-oriented solutions. PARLP combines research, leadership development, advocacy, workforce development, and political education.
The 7-Step PAR Cycle
Why PARLP Exists
- Systems often silence the people most impacted by their failures.
- Incarcerated people are frequently studied but rarely positioned as researchers.
- Traditional research often extracts stories without redistributing power.
- PARLP disrupts traditional power dynamics in research by centering lived experience as expertise.
- Community knowledge should shape policy, advocacy, and systems change.
We are not subjects of research. We are researchers.— PARLP Community Researcher
Those closest to the harm should shape the solutions.— PARLP Core Principle
Research should belong to the community.— PARLP Vision
What Community Researchers Learn
PARLP develops transferable workforce and leadership skills that prepare community researchers for careers in advocacy, research, public health, and systems change work.
These skills translate directly to careers in:
Community Researchers Are Paid for Their Labor
PARLP recognizes that incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people hold critical knowledge, expertise, and lived experience.
Unlike traditional research models that extract stories and labor without compensation, PARLP compensates community researchers for their time, leadership, analysis, facilitation, and contributions.
- Lived experience is expertise
- Community knowledge has value
- Impacted people should materially benefit from the work they help create
Compensation is not charity. It is part of building equity, leadership, dignity, and long-term opportunity for directly impacted communities.
“We do not believe impacted people should volunteer their trauma, labor, or expertise for free.”
From Research to Action
PARLP doesn’t end at analysis. Community researchers create tangible tools, resources, and advocacy that drive real-world change.
A real research artifact created by PARLP community researchers — mapping the landscape of higher education access in prison. This is what participatory research looks like in practice: collaborative, visual, and rooted in direct experience.
Made by community researchers 💖
How PARLP Is Different
Traditional Research
- Extractive
- Outsider-led
- Community studied
- Academic outcomes only
- Stories collected, then removed from community
- Participants unpaid
- Research detached from action
PARLP
- Participatory
- Community-led
- Lived experience centered
- Action-oriented
- Leadership building
- Community researchers compensated
- Research tied to advocacy & systems change
- Knowledge stays with the community
Our Impact
PARLP’s impact extends beyond numbers. It transforms how research is done, who leads it, and what change it creates.
Beyond the Numbers: Transformative Impact
PARLP gave me the tools to see my experience as expertise. I’m not just surviving the system — I’m studying it, naming it, and changing it.
PARLP Cohort 4 ParticipantBefore PARLP, I didn’t know I could be a researcher. Now I know I can lead, teach, and create change from right where I am.
PARLP Cohort 3 ParticipantSupport Community Researchers Creating Change From Inside
PARLP is building a future where directly impacted people are not excluded from research, policy, or movement leadership — but are leading it.
