Exploring and understanding evidence on the learning-to-earning transition – introducing a synthesis project

Cem Yavuz, Sanghwa Lee, Abdelrahman Nagy, Calum Hebron
27 May 2025 blog  
Youth transitions from learning to earning continue to pose a global challenge

In 2025, the ILO estimated that one in five young people (aged 15-24) worldwide remain not in education, employment or training (NEET). Young women are especially affected, with global rates more than twice as high as those for young men. The challenge is not only severe in low- and middle-income countries but also in high-income settings.

Strengthening Cote d'Ivoire's nutrition strategy with rapid evidence

Annie Vincent, Paul Thissen
08 February 2024 blog  
Côte d'Ivoire faces substantial nutritional challenges, with 17 percent of children under five experiencing stunting and over six percent exhibiting wasting in 2021. Overall, 18 percent of the population grapples with the imminent threat of acute food insecurity. In addition, many communities lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation, which can transmit diseases such as cholera, dysentery and polio. Recurrent infections can also be a major cause of malnutrition and child stunting. 3ie’s WACIE Helpdesk supported the government’s response to the crisis by providing up-to-date evidence to inform and improve its strategy.

Seven ideas for rapid evidence that is both rigorous and actionable

Anca Dumitrescu, Paul Thissen
20 September 2023 blog  
When policymakers come to us for rapid response evidence, they want it to be immediate, actionable, and reliable, drawing on findings from high-quality evaluations. These requirements can sometimes seem to be at odds – often there are details of a specific policy situation that have not yet been addressed by rigorous research. So how do we balance the competing needs to be both actionable and rigorous?

Strengthening democracy and freedom in backsliding contexts: mapping and synthesizing the evidence

Etienne Lwamba, Ashiqun Nabi, Pierre Marion, Mark Engelbert
06 June 2023 blog  
In recent years, international observers such as the V-Dem Institute have highlighted an alarming crisis of democracy with a decline in competitive elections, political participation and public accountability. For the first time in two decades, the Institute’s 2023 Democracy Report found more closed autocracies than liberal democracies in the world.

Effective interventions for putting child immunization back on track in L&MICs

Monica Jain, Maren Duvendack
26 April 2023 blog  
Despite being highly effective in preventing avoidable disease and death among children, routine child immunization remains well below targets. Child immunization has been especially hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, reversing years of gains. In 2021, 25 million children missed essential vaccines, a high not seen since 2009. Putting immunization back on track, especially in low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs), is an urgent priority.

Evidence impact: Improving education worldwide through the use of systematic review evidence

Paul Thissen
05 August 2021 blog  
With development evidence, as with many things, more is generally better. But there's a caveat: lots of evidence on a topic can easily be overwhelming unless there's a good synthesis to tease out the strong findings from the background noise.

What works to empower women in fragile settings?

Will Ridlehoover, Etienne Lwamba, Meital Kupfer, Shannon Shisler
29 July 2021 blog  
Across the globe, women face tremendous challenges when it comes to equitable access to resources, exercising meaningful agency and decision-making power and aspiring to and accomplishing achievements. In fragile and conflict-affected settings, those challenges are often exacerbated, as women are particularly vulnerable and often left out of decision-making.

All eyes on immunization: what do we know about effective vaccination campaigns?

Charlotte Lane, Avantika Bagai
29 April 2021 blog  
With COVID still raging across the world, the topic of immunization is receiving more attention than it has in decades. Today, the world is waiting to see if immunizations will help turn the corner and end the biggest health and humanitarian crisis in a generation. Given this, policymakers and implementers need to know what works to increase immunization rates, for whom, and at what cost.

A systematic approach to building the evidence base for gender equality and women’s empowerment in fragile contexts

Meital Kupfer, Will Ridlehoover, Etienne Lwamba, Shannon Shisler, Ada Sonnenfeld
03 February 2021 blog  
In 2020, 23 per cent of the world’s population lived in fragile contexts, including 76.5 per cent of all those living in extreme poverty. While women comprise about half of the population in fragile and conflict-affected contexts (FCAS), there are often major gaps in how interventions in these settings consider their inclusion and empowerment.

Farmer Field Schools can improve yields, raise incomes, and reduce pesticide use

Paul Thissen
15 December 2020 blog  
Interventions that raise agricultural productivity in poor regions have the potential to offer two benefits at once: increasing the food supply and providing income for farmers, who make up a majority of the world's poor.