On 19 March, Jerome, Associate at Li Foundation, joined a room of NGO practitioners for the Action Research Case Workshop held at the China Global Philanthropy Institute — each bringing a shared question: how do we bridge practice and knowledge, and translate real-world experiences into insights?
The workshop began not with answers, but with a reframing. Led by Associate Professor Xiang Yu from Beijing Normal University, the session challenged a familiar assumption — that research must be objective and detached. Instead, participants were invited to see themselves not as observers, but as part of the systems they seek to change. In action research, one’s personal values and experience are not biases to eliminate, but a resource to draw from. Practice, reflection, and learning are deeply intertwined, forming a continuous cycle that turns doing into knowing.
As the day unfolded, the conversation shifted from theory to practice. Professor Wang from Dongguan University of Technology guided participants through the craft of systematically reflecting on our work to generate rigorous insights — how to pause, question, and uncover the often-unspoken assumptions behind decisions and actions. Through reflective dialogue, what might otherwise remain as an intuition begins to take shape as structured knowledge. For many in the room, it was a moment of recognition: that the challenges they face daily are not just operational hurdles, but opportunities for deeper inquiry and learning.
In the final segment, the room came alive with discussion. Participants presented to each other, sharing their own practice contexts and grappling with real, unresolved problems. There were no neat solutions, but that was precisely the point. By situating learning within lived experience, action research opens up space not just for answers, but for better questions. It is from this process that new pathways and paradigms begin to emerge.
For Jerome, the workshop was a reminder that meaningful impact is not just about doing, but learning from what we do. As the sector continues to evolve, there is growing recognition that impactful solutions require not only strong implementation but also the ability to reflect, learn, and adapt. Action research offers a valuable framework to support this—empowering practitioners to turn experience into insight, and insight into more effective action.
At Li Foundation, this spirit of learning through doing continues to shape how we approach our work—one question, one reflection, and one step at a time.
The book showcases how the participants challenged their limits and conquered the World Marathon Challenge and North Pole Marathon to inspire people to challenge their own limits and pursue their dreams boldly.
The book tells the stories behind the event which saw the largest number of people in history running 1045km round Taiwan in 19 days.