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In all the jobs I have held, the only training that has ever stayed with me was a three-day course on logframes, held in a very pleasant beach hotel on Fiji’s beautiful coral coast. This was a few months after I joined what was then the Overseas Development Administration, DFID’s forerunner. Three days on logframes. Yes really. Our Pacific team were gathered together to learn this new skill. The course was designed not only to help us think rigorously about how change happens, but also to...

As a cohort of people, ‘children in work’ have become critical to the everyday functioning of diverse supply chain systems. This Working Paper considers diverse commodity chains (leather, waste, recycling and sex) to explore the business realities that generate child labour in its worst forms. A review of the literature finds that occurrence of the worst forms of child labour (WFCL) in supply chain systems is contingent on the organising logics and strategies adopted by actors in both the...

This Emerging Evidence Report shares evidence of how, for whom, and under what circumstances, Participatory Action Research (PAR) leads to innovative actions. A rapid realist review was undertaken to develop programme theories that explain how PAR generates innovation. The methodology included peer-reviewed and grey literature and moments of engagement with programme staff, such that their input supported the development and refinement of three resulting initial programme theories (IPTs)...

Sarah Hurcombe shares what she's learning from the public service revolution building momentum in Europe.

External consultants, learning partners or critical friends -whatever we call them- can seldom change the system or organisational (learning) culture from outside. So, how can Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) consultants support real change instead of creating tools or processes that are quickly forgotten without any real institutional ownership? Consultants and learning partners can seldom change a learning system or organisational culture – it just does not work like that. What...

CLARISSA (Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia) is a large-scale Participatory Action Research programme which aims to identify, evidence, and promote effective multi-stakeholder action to tackle the drivers of the worst forms of child labour in selected supply chains in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Myanmar. CLARISSA places a particular focus on participants’ own ‘agency’. In other words, participants’ ability to understand the situation they face, and to...

The Programme Operating Framework (PrOF) sets the standard for how the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) delivers its programmes and projects.

How does Small Foundation think about the impact…

Background: Addressing today’s sustainability challenges requires adopting a systemic approach where social and ecological systems are treated as integrated social-ecological systems. Such systems are complex, and the international development sector increasingly recognises the need to account for the complexity of the systems that they seek to transform. Purpose: This paper sketches out the elements of a complexity-aware monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system for international...

In 2015, leaders from around the world agreed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The seventh goal (SDG7) is: “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” In the same year, the world’s leaders concluded the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, which will require a global transition in the energy sector away from the use of fossil fuels. Yet, despite growing investments in clean energy in many developing countries, the...

Global efforts to improve energy access and quality and to tackle climate change need a different approach to addressing poor energy governance. In 2015, leaders from around the world agreed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030.1 The seventh goal (SDG7) is “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” In the same year, the world’s leaders concluded the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, which will require a global...

This learning paper highlights how elements of outcome mapping were used by Save the Children Sweden in a project (2018-2020) that supports adolescents, affected by the Syria crisis, to become more resilient. The paper first outlines how the spheres of influence framework has been applied to develop an actor focused theory of change. It then describes how progress markers, as an alternative to SMART indicators, were formulated to monitor the programme’s results. The paper also outlines how...

In March, members of the team in Bangladesh (Community Mobilisers and Lead Community Mobilisers) participated in a training course in non-violent communication (NVC). NVC is a communication technique that prioritises listening over speaking. It aims to improve communication by achieving a deeper understanding of our emotions and values and what we observe in the behaviour of others. The training was facilitated by Paul Kahawatte, a UK-based mediator, facilitator and trainer, Roufun Naher, a...

Many education systems in low- and middle-income countries are experiencing a learning crisis. Many efforts to address this crisis do not account for the system features of education, meaning that they fail to consider the ways that interactions and feedback loops produce outcomes. Thinking through the feedback relationships that produce the education system can be challenging. The RISE Education Systems Framework, which is sufficiently structured to give boundaries to the analysis but...

At UNDP Innovation we are on a journey to shift our approach to innovation to help tackle complex development challenges. In short, we are moving away from single point solutions, and instead we are…

This learning paper provides guidance to humanitarian innovators on how to use evidence to enable and drive adoption of innovation. Innovation literature and practice show time and time again that it is difficult to scale innovations. Even when an innovation is demonstrably impactful, better than the existing solution and good value for money, it does not automatically get adopted or used in mainstream humanitarian programming. Why do evidence-based innovations face difficulties in scaling...

Learning from our experience in 2020, we asked the alumni of our HKS Implementing Public Policy (IPP) Executive Education program, if they wanted to work with our students on their nominated problems. Eight IPP alumni, William Keith Young, Adaeze Oreh, Milzy Carrasco, Kevin Schilling, Artem Shaipov, George Imbenzi, David Wuyep, and Raphael Kenigsberg, who had been trained on PDIA and implementation, signed up to work with our students. Thirty-seven students signed up to take the course...

Movement organizations work in inherently uncertain political environments. Whether an organization is advocating for a new minimum wage, working to close a private prison, or seeking to influence an election, the terrain they are operating on shifts nearly every day. That is increasingly true as political uncertainty rises in the 21st century, particularly for historically race-class subjugated communities. Any movement-based organization seeking to build, exercise, and win political power...

The enthusiasm for the potential of RCTs in development rests in part on the assumption that the use of the rigorous evidence that emerges from an RCT (or from a small set of studies identified as rigorous in a “systematic” review) leads to the adoption of more effective policies, programs or projects. However, the supposed benefits of using rigorous evidence for “evidence based” policy making depend critically on the extent to which there is external validity. If estimates of causal impact...

Celebrate 20 years of Outcome Mapping with the OMLC Stewards plus special guests in this 90 minute webinar. - Exclusive celebration video with Outcome Blues soundtrack - Fireside chat with the authors of the OM manual, Sarah Earl, Fred Carden & Terry Smutylo, to hear their views on OM’s evolution since the 2001 publication - Launch of our new paper presenting core concepts of OM and guiding practices for transformative change, with special guests Sonal Zaveri & Julius Nyangaga as discussants