This directorate works to contribute to the long term sustainability of ACO Foundation’s core strategic purpose. It is charged to provide a platform for creativity, innovation, a competitive edge, accelerated organization growth and clear foresight about problems that need solutions. The directorate is guided by the principle to search for new knowledge and build up on existing knowledge based on participatory approaches. It will ensure that the organization memory and lessons learnt are well recorded and stored for future reference and enhancement of overall performance. The departments under this directorate are largely categorized as Research, Innovation, and Publications.
1) Department of Research for Environmental Sustainability
This department focuses on creative work of inquiry or examination undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge for a sustainable environment. The department is more inclined to using ” Participatory Action Research” in its evidence based interventions in terms of programs and activities. The significance of using participatory approaches to research is that, we research with the people and not on the people. The common people at the grassroots become subjects and not objects of research. They become co-researchers and indeed the primary stakeholders in this process while ACO Foundation team as a provider organization takes its rightful place as a secondary stakeholder. This approach encourages inter-subjective dialogue with the locals in environmental researches or programs, thus giving birth to mutual understanding of each other. Once there is mutual understanding people reach at unforced consensus which leads to community ownership of this process of environmental sustainability. Community ownership brings sustainability of the process. This is the major reason why the department team uses participatory approaches in research to establish or confirm facts, reaffirm the results of previous work, expand on past work in the field, develop further knowledge on a topic, solve new or existing problems, support theories, or develop new theories as far as environmental sustainability is concerned.
2) Department of Innovation for Environmental Sustainability
This department ensures, innovation about environmental protection and natural resources conservation is sustainably nurtured and handed over to future generations.
3) Department of Publications for Environmental Sustainability
This department is charged with the responsibility of making the environmental findings or content of a research available to the general public for use. It can be in the form of a text, images, or other audio-visual content on any traditional medium, including books, bulletins, booklets, broadsides, flyers, leaflets, journals, newsletters, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets. The department team must therefore, ensure that all environmental published studies should be subjected to some measure for assessing the validity or reliability of its procedures in order to prevent the publication of unproven findings. This is, to discourage researchers from giving great consideration to findings that are not replicated frequently.