As part of the Benin Health Project, “Developing an Early Warning and Response System for Climate-Sensitive Waterborne Disease Outbreaks in Benin” , an intensive in-person group hackathon on participatory research was organized to strengthen teamwork, engagement, and problem-solving capacities among emerging researchers.

This initiative was designed to equip young researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and PhD/MSc students with practical skills in participatory methodologies, enabling them to analyze climate-sensitive health challenges, apply innovative data-collection approaches, assess community knowledge, and develop context-adapted solutions through narrative-based synthesis for water sanitation under climate pressure.

Held from 20 to 22 November 2025 at URMAPha, Université d’Abomey-Calavi, this training was supported by the CLARE Capacity Strengthening Hub through the Responsive Fund.

Training activities were delivered by experts from ARAYAA and Blolab Benin. Seventeen participants from consortium member institutions—URMAPha Université d’Abomey-Calavi, Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Médicale Appliquée, and IRHOB—benefited from capacity strengthening on the following components:

• Development and structuring phases of a community hackathon
• Tools for documenting and evaluating participatory hackathons
• Participatory facilitation techniques
• Capitalization of results and solution outputs
• Design and prototyping of sustainable solution models

This initiative reaffirms the commitment of the Benin Health Project to empowering the next generation of young researchers with advanced competencies for resilience building and the deployment of inclusive, community-driven approaches to addressing health risks associated with climate change.