Our Values and Mission
The Catalyst Foundation, along with the Catalyst Group of institutions, is firmly committed to promoting ethical practices in the
context of social impact initiatives and organisations.
We believe that great care must be taken when engaging with different communities, especially when conducting research studies to
ensure the protection of their dignity, safety, and rights.
Accordingly, the mandate of the Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) is to ensure that ethical principles are followed while working with vulnerable communities. More specifically, we aim to ensure that the research projects involving human subjects, particularly members of vulnerable communities or demographics that are carried out are:
Sound in design
Have statistical validity
Do not compromise the safety of the human subjects
Conducted under supervision of trained persons
Include participants with informed consent
What We Do
To ensure the highest ethical standards in research and community engagement, the Catalyst Foundation IEC accepts submissions from all organisations involved in social development research, carefully evaluating them through a comprehensive ethical framework to protect the dignity, rights, safety, and well-being of all actual and potential research participants.
The only exclusions to the applications we review are those involving a biomedical product, efficacy studies, industry-related components, or clinical trials.
Scope of IEC
Review and approve all types of research proposals involving human participants to safeguard the dignity, rights, safety, and well-being of all actual and potential research participants.
Any field research projects and studies that have a biomedical product/efficacy/industry or clinical trial component will not be accepted.