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This paper synthesises the findings of a set of country studies commissioned by the RISE Programme to explore the influence of politics and power on education sector policymaking and implementation. The synthesis groups the countries into three political-institutional contexts: - Dominant contexts, where power is centred around a political leader and a hierarchical governance structure. As the Vietnam case details, top-down leadership potentially can provide a robust platform for improving...

This book analyses the shortcomings of the Western development aid programme. Through exploring the evolution of aid over more than seven decades, development is examined as an industry with a variety of motives and actors. The driving forces and dynamics in the relationship between aid and economic development are highlighted in relation to faulty development structures and misaligned aims. With a particular focus on Egypt, radical questions are posed on how global aid and development can...

Most development practitioners have long recognized that deep contextual knowledge is crucial to understanding how projects interact with their local systems and, in turn, to navigating these systems. Moreover, this knowledge must complement projects' technical solutions, or they will fall flat and may even undercut project objectives as they clatter down. What, then, explains practitioners' particular interest in TWP as an explicit strategy and more than just "doing good development"? This...

How can we transform monitoring and evaluation (M&E) into a more adaptive, emergent process to address uncertainty and complexity in todays’ world? How do we move from compliance and accountability to learning – to support better, more timely, decisions? Join GEI Program Manager, Dugan Fraser, as he discusses these questions and others with Special Guest, Søren Haldrup, from UNDP's Strategic Innovation Unit where he manages UNDP's innovation facility and leads a new initiative called the M&E Sandbox.

This guidance seeks to ensure that UK Aid Direct applicants and grant holders understand what the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) means by beneficiary feedback mechanisms, and more specifically, that they: • Understand the terms used that relate to beneficiary feedback mechanisms in UK Aid Direct guidance and templates • Understand beneficiary feedback mechanisms and why they are a useful tool for project monitoring and learning • Learn how to use beneficiary feedback...

This CDI Practice Paper by Tom Aston and Marina Apgar makes the case for ‘bricolage’ in complexity-aware and qualitative evaluation methods. It provides a framework based on a review of 33 methods to support evaluators to be more intentional about bricolage and to combine the component parts of relevant methods more effectively. It discusses two cases from practice to illustrate the value added of taking a more intentional approach. It further argues that navigating different forms of...

The CLARISSA Nepal team collected and analysed 400 life stories of children and young people engaged in or affected by the worst forms of child labour (WFCL), particularly in the “Adult Entertainment” sector in Nepal, which includes children working in Dohoris (restaurants playing folk music), dance bars, spa-massage parlours, khaja ghars (tea/snack shop) and guest houses. Stories were also collected from children in CLARISSA’s focus neighbourhoods, children in this category...

Improved seed has the potential to boost crop yields and improve livelihoods for millions of small farmers in Malawi. Yet many small farmers are not using it. The reasons are numerous, but one of the most important is the prevalence of fake seed in the marketplace. Improved seed is more expensive to produce and sells for a much higher price than normal seed and grain, providing an incentive for unscrupulous traders to cheat farmers, using various tricks such as filling improved seed packets...

Process tracing is a causal methodology that can help people understand how a particular large-scale change actually happened within a complex dynamic environment. Much of the existing literature provides important information about the method; we wrote this brief to help more people operationalize the concepts and learn about practical steps for using this method more easily, with quality, and toward a more equitable world. This piece was written based on our experiences implementing...

In order to support the digital transformation of government operations Digital Learning Modules for Civil Servants are available, an off-the-shelf package of capacity development in form of replicable training modules to empower public servants at both the local and central government level to be leaders of digital transformation for delivering better public services. The modules cover a multitude of fundamental areas: comprehending digital government and services, human-centered design...

How a new approach to monitoring and evaluation can make sense of complex projects Building the foundation for results, sense-making and learning ‘Demonstrating real world impact can be an elusive holy grail for most NGO …

In recent decades, the World Bank and many bilateral development partners have provided funding to support land administration reform. Traditional land administration reform projects focus on the economic and technical design of interventions based on a library of best practice, commonly avoiding the “messy politics” typically involved in land governance. Experience and lessons from land administration reform initiatives have been documented and a recurrent theme is that many projects fail...

“Civic tech” broadly refers to the use of digital technologies to support a range of citizen engagement processes. From allowing individuals to report problems to local government to enabling the crowdsourcing of national legislation, civic tech aims to promote better policies and services – while contributing to more inclusive democratic institutions. But could civic tech affect public issues in a way that benefits some and excludes others? Over the decades, the question of who...

Collective leadership feels timely and important in an uncertain, fast changing, and challenging world. This report comes at this heightened moment of urgency and appetite for renewal, bringing potential to do things differently in public services and communities. The opportunities and challenges of true collaboration-in-practice, in the absence of blueprints, mean that it has never been more necessary to change ways of working and foreground learning. As outcomes remain important, and...

This Research and Evidence Paper presents the theory-based and participatory evaluation design of the Child Labour: Action-Research- Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA) programme. The evaluation is embedded in emergent Participatory Action Research with children and other stakeholders to address the drivers of the worst forms of child labour (WFCL). The report describes the use of contribution analysis as an overarching approach, with its emphasis on crafting, nesting and...

In her acclaimed study of effective cross-organizational teamwork, Harvard Business School Professor Amy C. Edmonson concluded that “trying things that...