Message from our Executive Director, Marie Gaarder

• Our staff has innovated and improvised every step of the way. For example, when travel became difficult, our staff leading regional and country programs in West Africa and the Philippines launched helpdesks that produced rapid evidence briefs, products that respond to specific questions raised by policymakers. These briefs provide a quick overview of the state of evidence around a particular development issue and aid decision making. For example, this rapid response brief highlights evidence on how cash transfers compare to food distribution and this brief underscores the effects of computer-assisted learning programs on education outcomes. 
• Our Aquaculture team worked closely with partners in the field and the implementation organization in Bangladesh to innovatively collect data and completed a baseline survey, despite trying circumstances in both India and Bangladesh. They came up with customized safety protocols to ensure work was conducted as safely as possible. 
• In our Rural India Livelihoods program, the team took all engagements with state governments online, reaching officials at both state and district level, something which would have been challenging if these were held in-person. The team also developed state-wise summary statistics to aid researchers and decision-makers working on projects in the livelihoods sector.  
• In locations like Senegal, where some in-person activities were possible, our West Africa Capacity Building and Impact Evaluation (WACIE) program team, along with CLEAR-FA, conducted a training on impact evaluations. The WACIE team also conducted a hybrid training at the University of Parakou, Benin on impact evaluations. 
• We also developed trainings on impact evaluation methodology for three institutions: the African Population and Health Center, Kenya; Makerere University, Uganda and with CLEAR-AA, for the University of Zambia.  Ahead of the UN food systems summit in September 2021, we focused efforts on delivering our largest Evidence Gap Map project on food systems, which includes more than 2,000 studies.  

Spotlight | 15 years after ‘Will we ever learn?’: Well, did we?  

Fifteen years ago, the Evaluation Gap Working Group published a report noting the absence of solid evidence on the effectiveness of development programming. This report, and the community behind it, drove a wave of work in impact evaluations focused on development, including setting up 3ie. The drive for more and better evidence has continued to expand and evolve. Today, as the development community faces compounding challenges posed by the pandemic, we believe it’s a good time to ask, what we have learned. To get two different vantage points, we spoke with 3ie’s Executive Director Marie Gaarder, and Research Associate Etienne Lwamba, to try and capture how the evaluation field has changed.

Read the full blog

 Blogs

• Working side-by-side across the COVID divide | 3ie staff
• WACIE Helpdesk: A new source of support for evidence-informed decision-making in West Africa (also available in French) | Paul Thissen
• All eyes on immunization: what do we know about effective vaccination campaigns? | Charlotte Lane, Avantika Bagai

UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration: looking back at evidence that can make a difference