“I have had the pleasure of working with Alison Barclay (Collective Action) for almost five years. During this time, she has contributed to and shaped program design, monitoring and evaluation, and strategic communications for Meridian (formerly AIDS Action Council). While Alison’s skills are broad ranging, she is a monitoring and evaluation specialist, and this is where she excels.
Alison is a strategic thinker. She has the ability to implement strategy into program design and delivery, infusing action research and ongoing evaluation methodology into her work. This serves to demonstrate both the organisation’s impact and outcomes.
Alison has great interpersonal skills and has built productive and respectful relationships with teams, even in the trickiest of environments. I have been particularly impressed by Alison’s ability to work across large organisations with strategic insight into grassroots peer-led community organisations. Alison’s professional and refined approach and wide range of skills and experience make her work incredibly valuable. She would be an asset to any organisation looking for a professional, ethical, and accomplished consultant.”
Philippa Moss | CEO, Meridian (formerly AIDS Action Council)
“Alison and I have worked in collaboration on a number of consultancies for not-for profit organisations in the community and health sectors in recent years. Alison has a strong skill set and many strengths. She brings depth and rigour to consultancy work. She has particular strengths in research methodologies, translating evidence-based frameworks and utilising impact measurement tools to drive organisational practice and development. She is passionate, driven and committed to quality outcomes. She is also deeply committed to ensuring that impacted communities are at the centre of her work. Alison is a team player who invests in relationships. I look forward to working with her again in the future.”
Rebecca Vassarotti | Rebecca Vassarotti Consulting
“Alison is a dedicated person who delivers quality products on time and is willing to go the extra mile. She has expertise in developing gender-based violence prevention programs with solid monitoring and evaluation component integrated into it. We have found that she takes an empowering approach to working with our national staff.”
Charlotte Kakebeeke | PNG Programme Director, Oxfam in Papua New Guinea
“Alison and her team worked with OPTIONS, a multi-country USAID-funded consortium, to produce an oral PrEP-specific training package for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in Africa. The package was complete with foundational modules on sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender-based violence, and HIV transmission and prevention – as well as a fabulous youth-friendly toolkit of printed resources for youth ambassadors to use in their community work. Of note, this package was field-tested in Zimbabwe, where local partners observed a significant increase in oral PrEP uptake by AGYW in areas reached by the training. The package was also referenced in the PEPFAR 2020 Country Operational Plan Guidance, specifically for its guidance related to supporting AGYW who have experienced gender-based violence.
Alison and her team worked with us remotely via email, phone calls, and webinars, as well as in-person during a prototyping workshop in Harare with partners from multiple countries. Throughout the project, Alison and her team were extremely flexible and responsive, ensuring that the training package would be able to meet the multiple needs of a variety of countries, NGOs/CBOs, and operating environments. It was a pleasure to work with her and the team, and the package has been well received by adolescent girls and young women, CBOs/NGOs, local governments, and funders alike!”
Morgan Garcia | Senior Clinical Research Manager, FHI 360
“We engaged Collective Action to research and write a desk review on promising approaches for the prevention of violence against women and girls, with particular reference to Vanuatu and the wider Pacific. Alison and her team were a pleasure to work with and produced a well-written and comprehensive report which will be very useful for guiding our future work.”
CARE International in Vanuatu
“The approach that you both took to the day created a space for women and men to discuss what are sensitive issues in a way that was strengths-based, supportive and not overly threatening (or perhaps had just the right amount of threat). Also, your ability to adjust the afternoon session on the fly to respond to what had emerged the day prior was great.”
Dr Tim Grice | UQ International Development
“Alison conducted community research and facilitated a series of workshops with our LGBTIQA+ Service User Reference Group (SURG) Members, and sector stakeholders, as part of a co-design process to create a best practice mental health service model for the LGBTIQA+ community in Canberra and surrounding regions.
Alison worked in a highly considered, trauma-informed, humble, diligent, knowledgeable, respectful and flexible way with our diverse and complex communities to design the model.
At the conclusion of the design phase of the project, SURG Members resoundingly praised Alison for having captured and reflected so accurately the mental health and well-being needs of our LGBTIQA+ communities, and best practice approaches for our service to address these needs. The resulting model has also been highly commended by funding sources, and is currently being implemented for our LGBTIQA+ communities at Meridian.
We love working with Alison and her team, and have absolutely no hesitation in recommending her services to other organisations and communities.”
Catherine Mellors | Special Projects Officer, Meridian
“I would absolutely choose to work with Alison again. She came highly recommended to MHCC ACT and lived up to her reputation. We also liked that she specialises in working with for-purpose organisations and her quote was very competitive. She worked with us to deliver our first independent stakeholder survey and then analyse and interpret the results. She is professional, thorough, and flexible to work with and you can trust her advice. The final product she presented is exactly what we were hoping for – and more. I highly recommend Alison to anyone considering working with her.”
Leith Felton-Taylor | Policy and Sector Development Manager, Mental Health Community Coalition ACT
