Podcasts about poverty action

AgriCorps: http://www.agricorps.org/Movement for School-Based Agricultural Education: http://www.sbae.org/4-H Liberia: https://4hliberia.wordpress.com/Trent McKnight's TedX Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2pPO29DaYsToday's episode is going to open a lot of eyes I think. We tend to think of youth programs like 4-H and FFA as great things for the kids to be doing. Very few recognize them for the power they have to not only develop young agricultural leaders but also as tools for spreading ideas and technologies. That's what today's episode is about, and it's a personal one for me. I grew up in 4-H and FFA and both organizations had a profound impact on my life and my worldview. Then in 2012 I joined a team led by today's guest, Trent McKnight, and spent several weeks in the country of Liberia interviewing farmers about food insecurity and farming practices. That experience also left a permanent impression on my life. So I've known Trent for about 25 years now and have had a chance to work with his non-profit organization, AgriCorps in various capacities over the years. In fact Trent first appeared on this show WAY back on episode 27, which i posted in November of 2016, so over eight years ago. For those of you not familiar, 4-H and FFA are youth agricultural organizations. 4-H varies a lot state to state and country to country, but in Liberia which is a country in subsaharan Africa that we will focus on today, they have what is known as a school-based agricultural education model. So in that way Liberia 4-H is similar to how FFA is here in the states. It involves three major components: classroom instruction in agriculture as part of their school, leadership events and contents, and a project outside of the classroom which in Liberia they refer to as a Home Entrepreneurship Project or HEP. If it sounds like a great way to learn a lot about agriculture and develop yourself as a leader and entrepreneur, you're absolutely right. But it's also more than that. The model was intended to lower the risk of adopting new agricultural innovations and as you're about to hear it is also very effective in doing just that. Some biographical background: Trent McKnight is an experienced international agriculturalist, investor, and cattle rancher from rural West Texas. Trent holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Agricultural Economics and Comparative Politics from Oklahoma State University and The London School of Economics, respectively. He has held leadership positions, including national president of the Future Farmers of America and chair of the USDA Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Advisory Committee. In 2013, Trent founded AgriCorps, a nonprofit organization focused on improving school-based agricultural education in sub-Saharan Africa. Through AgriCorps, he created the International Agricultural Education Fellowship Program under the Trade Title of the 2018 Farm Bill and launched The Movement for School-Based Agricultural Education. G. Umaru Sheriff is the National Executive Director and co-founder of 4-H Liberia, a local Non-Governmental Organisation reviving efforts from the 1970s and 1980s, when Liberia boasted over 1,000 4-H clubs. Under his leadership, 4-H Liberia has worked in hundreds of rural communities and empowered thousands of youth through School-Based Agricultural Education (SBAE) and leadership development. Committed to evidence and learning, Umaru partnered with Northwestern University, Innovations for Poverty Action, and AgriCorps on the largest randomized

Show Notes: Daniel Brotman shares his journey from undergrad to medical school. After finishing a year of research in Boston, he decided to work for a year before applying for medical school. He had already taken the MCATs and taught Stanley Kaplan during his year off. He also worked in the lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Music and Circadian Rhythm  Daniel talks about his love of music. He considered himself a better musician than singer, and he loved playing piano. He has a 1930 Steinway piano and plays piano karaoke for fun. He has been participating in a music group at Harvard and has heard about other Harvard alums joining similar groups. From music the conversation turns to circadian rhythms, which are rhythms that cycle through the body based on the action of the circadian pacemaker. Circadian rhythms are synchronized to the 24-hour day based on visual stimuli, such as light coming into the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus. Internal Medicine and Finding Work/Life Balance  Daniel was accepted to medical school after his year of research. He started at the University of Virginia and found it to be a beautiful, traditional place. He initially didn't want to do internal medicine but discovered his passion for it at the end of his third year. He married his first wife, Edith, while in medical school. Daniel graduated from medical school and went on to become a hospitalist at the Cleveland Clinic. He chose to practice inpatient medicine due to his love for it and the intense work required for his family. Hospital medicine was a new field at the time, and Daniel's career began there. Working as a Hospitalist Daniel explains that being a hospitalist means practicing in the hospital rather than having an outpatient practice. Patients often come in through the emergency room and need an inpatient doctor to help them through their acute illness. Daniel's role is also as a consultant to help surgeons care for their patients who have medical issues or help other disciplines help care for their patients who have medical issues. Hospital Medicine is defined by the site of practice being in the hospital, similar to an emergency room medicine doctor practicing in the emergency department. After leaving the Cleveland Clinic, Daniel returned to Hopkins, where he started the Hospitalist program.  He learned that humility is essential in healthcare, as taking care of patients alone doesn't make for a good team. He also learned that medicine quickly gets out of date, with many concepts still valid but some completely turned on their heads. Overall, his experiences and lessons learned over the years have helped him become a more effective and compassionate healthcare professional. The Goldilocks Phenomenon Daniel Brotman discusses the importance of humility in healthcare, particularly in the context of medical knowledge and practices changing. He gives the example of beta blockers and heart failure treatment. He explains that beta blockers can drive patients into congestive heart failure by reducing their heart pumping activity, which is crucial for patients with weak heart muscles. However, studies have shown that beta blockers can be beneficial for those with weaker heart muscles. Daniel discusses the Goldilocks phenomenon, where doctors should not just jump on the latest research from journals but also not gravitate towards every new strategy published in medical literature. This can lead to side effects or challenges with the effectiveness of new drugs. He suggests that doctors should not rely solely on society's guidelines, as they may not always be updated over time. Instead, they should look for guidelines synthesized by knowledgeable professionals who have considered all issues and come up with a synthesis that makes sense. He also discusses the importance of humility in healthcare, stating that it is essential to rely on the expertise of colleagues and the entire team rather than oneself. AI in Healthcare The conversation turns to AI in healthcare such as Bridge, which listens to doctor conversations and creates notes based on them. While Bridge is effective in some cases, it struggles to put things fully in context. For example, it might report that the patient denies edema, which is not what it intended to convey. Despite this, it can create a note without looking at anything. However, there are potential areas where AI can make errors, which doctors should be aware of.  And it cannot provide a diagnosis. Doctors should be cautious when using AI tools, as the consequences of not double-checking their work can be significant. AI is expected to be beneficial in making recommendations for treatment strategies, but it should not replace doctors' work.  Directing the Hospitalists Program at John Hopkins Daniel has been directing the Hospitalist program for almost 20 years. He has since become a full professor and has an endowed chair named after John Flynn, a mentor and resident. He enjoys helping junior hospitalists navigate their career paths, which can be diverse and include research, quality improvement, or patient care. He has a great team of doctors to work with and mentor. One of the biggest challenges of leading a group of 50 hospitalists is delegation. Brotman has worked on developing ways to trust junior leaders and structure supervision in a way that maintains quality control. He has also learned to provide feedback to junior leaders, as they are high-performing and smart. Another challenge in leadership is trying to harmonize the economics of their work with clinical outcomes or academic outcomes. Many doctors feel pressure to be productive, which can negatively impact patient care.  Influential Harvard Professors and Courses Daniel discusses his experiences at Harvard, including his involvement in research and coursework in circadian rhythms with professors, which he found to be a significant part of his junior and senior year. He also mentions his passion for science and his focus on mastering content to pass tests. His interests have expanded since then, and he still enjoys reading non-fiction books and entertaining activities. He also enjoys skiing, although he was not very good on the ski team in his freshman year. Timestamps: 00:02: Dan's Journey from Harvard to Medical School  03:36: Understanding Circadian Rhythms  06:00: Medical School and Early Career  08:40: Hospitalist Career and Lessons Learned 22:26: AI in Medicine and Leadership Challenges 32:43: Personal Reflections and Broader Interests  37:19: Final Thoughts and Contact Information  Links: John Hopkins website: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/ Email: brotman@jhmi.edu Featured Non-profit This episode's featured non-profit is Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) recommended by Colin Teichholtz who reports: “Hi. I'm Colin Teichholtz, class of 1992 the featured nonprofit of this episode of The 92 report is Innovations for Poverty Action, or IPA. IPA discovers and advances what works to improve the lives of people living in poverty around the world. IPA has country offices throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. IPA is all about more evidence and less poverty. I've personally been a supporter of IPA for over a decade, and as of earlier this year, I'm honored to have the opportunity to serve as a member of the board. You can learn more about IPAs work at poverty, dash, action.org, and now here is Will Bachman with this week's episode.” To learn more about their work visit: https://poverty-action.org/

If someone said a global health and development programme was sustainable, participatory, and holistic, you'd have to guess that they were saying something positive. But according to today's guest Karen Levy — deworming pioneer and veteran of Innovations for Poverty Action, Evidence Action, and Y Combinator — each of those three concepts has become so fashionable that they're at risk of being seriously overrated and applied where they don't belong.Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in March 2022.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.Such concepts might even cause harm — trying to make a project embody all three is as likely to ruin it as help it flourish.First, what do people mean by 'sustainability'? Usually they mean something like the programme will eventually be able to continue without needing further financial support from the donor. But how is that possible? Governments, nonprofits, and aid agencies aim to provide health services, education, infrastructure, financial services, and so on — and all of these require ongoing funding to pay for materials and staff to keep them running.Given that someone needs to keep paying, Karen tells us that in practice, 'sustainability' is usually a euphemism for the programme at some point being passed on to someone else to fund — usually the national government. And while that can be fine, the national government of Kenya only spends $400 per person to provide each and every government service — just 2% of what the US spends on each resident. Incredibly tight budgets like that are typical of low-income countries.'Participatory' also sounds nice, and inasmuch as it means leaders are accountable to the people they're trying to help, it probably is. But Karen tells us that in the field, ‘participatory' usually means that recipients are expected to be involved in planning and delivering services themselves.While that might be suitable in some situations, it's hardly something people in rich countries always want for themselves. Ideally we want government healthcare and education to be high quality without us having to attend meetings to keep it on track — and people in poor countries have as many or more pressures on their time. While accountability is desirable, an expectation of participation can be as much a burden as a blessing.Finally, making a programme 'holistic' could be smart, but as Karen lays out, it also has some major downsides. For one, it means you're doing lots of things at once, which makes it hard to tell which parts of the project are making the biggest difference relative to their cost. For another, when you have a lot of goals at once, it's hard to tell whether you're making progress, or really put your mind to focusing on making one thing go extremely well. And finally, holistic programmes can be impractically expensive — Karen tells the story of a wonderful 'holistic school health' programme that, if continued, was going to cost 3.5 times the entire school's budget.In this in-depth conversation, originally released in March 2022, Karen Levy and host Rob Wiblin chat about the above, as well as:Why it pays to figure out how you'll interpret the results of an experiment ahead of timeThe trouble with misaligned incentives within the development industryProjects that don't deliver value for money and should be scaled downHow Karen accidentally became a leading figure in the push to deworm tens of millions of schoolchildrenLogistical challenges in reaching huge numbers of people with essential servicesLessons from Karen's many-decades careerAnd much moreChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:01:33)The interview begins (00:02:21)Funding for effective altruist–mentality development projects (00:04:59)Pre-policy plans (00:08:36)‘Sustainability', and other myths in typical international development practice (00:21:37)‘Participatoriness' (00:36:20)‘Holistic approaches' (00:40:20)How the development industry sees evidence-based development (00:51:31)Initiatives in Africa that should be significantly curtailed (00:56:30)Misaligned incentives within the development industry (01:05:46)Deworming: the early days (01:21:09)The problem of deworming (01:34:27)Deworm the World (01:45:43)Where the majority of the work was happening (01:55:38)Logistical issues (02:20:41)The importance of a theory of change (02:31:46)Ways that things have changed since 2006 (02:36:07)Academic work vs policy work (02:38:33)Fit for Purpose (02:43:40)Living in Kenya (03:00:32)Underrated life advice (03:05:29)Rob's outro (03:09:18)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Ben Cordell and Ryan KesslerTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Richard Mathera is a Managing Director at Irrational Labs. He leads Irrational Labs' healthcare practice and formerly led its financial decision-making work. Richard has overseen dozens of behavioral economics projects and experiments with commercial clients. A few of these include: One Medical, TytoCare, Neugen, Vouchers 4 Veggies, Steady, Beneficial State Bank, Simple, and Credit Karma. Prior to joining Irrational Labs, Richard was a Senior Behavioral Scientist at the Common Cents Lab, a Duke University initiative which leverages behavioral economics to improve the financial well-being of low and moderate income Americans, where he designed and launched numerous behaviorally-informed products, features, initiatives, and experiments. Formerly Richard has applied behavioral economics at ideas42 and developed randomized controlled trials at Innovations for Poverty Action in Morocco. He has also served as a Team Lead/Senior Investment Officer and a Senior Advisor at USAID's Office of Development Credit and worked at Cornerstone Research, an economic and financial consulting firm specializing in complex commercial litigation. Richard holds a Master's degree from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, where he studied Advanced Policy and Economic Analysis and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia, where he studied economics, Spanish, and French, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. For more information, you can email Richard at richard@irrationallabs.com or visit his website at https://irrationallabs.com/.

Iqbal Dhaliwal, Global Executive Director of MIT's Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and Vikrant Bhargava, Founder of Veddis Foundation, join Alberto Lidji to discuss the power of evidence, the ASPIRE partnership and the innovative Emissions Trading Scheme. We also explore how philanthropists should decide what to fund, where and how to fund; why evidence is so important in driving forward policy change; and why policy itself should be a key focus in the philanthropic space.  The ASPIRE partnership (Alliance for Scaling Policy Impact through Research and Evidence) is a coalition of governments, philanthropic organizations, civil society groups, and research institutions.  The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is a flexible, market-based approach to solving the air pollution problem in India. It works by capping emissions for a particular pollutant, like particulate matter, in a particular area. It allows sources of the pollutant, such as industrial plants, to trade emissions permits among themselves. The capping ensures emissions targets are met while trading allows this to be achieved cheaply. The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 900 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty. J-PAL co-founders Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, with longtime affiliate Michael Kremer, were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for their pioneering approach to alleviating global poverty. Veddis Foundation invests in organisations working at the intersection of technology, policy, and impact. Veddis also partners with governments on policy implementation, effective public service delivery and governance.  Thank you for downloading this episode of the Do One Better Podcast. Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 250+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship. 

Sue LaPierre From United Way Halifax Joins Us To Discuss Community Input, The Poverty Action Report, And More!   For more episodes, as well as the video version of the podcast: https://linktr.ee/twcpodcast   For more information about TEAM Work Cooperative please visit: https://teamworkcooperative.ca/

While some political parties are paying close attention to the squeezed middle this election - poverty action campaigners are worried those at the bottom of the heap are being left behind. The National Party's pledge to bring back no cause evictions and introduce benefit sanctions are among policies that some say could worsen living conditions for those who are already struggling. Wellington City Missioner Murray Edridge spoke to Ingrid Hipkiss.

Episode 245 (6 Jul 2023): Camelia Vasilov is a Moldovan / Romanian. After she left LUC (International development major), she volunteered in her native Moldova and worked in the Netherlands for a nonprofit connected to international schools. She studied for an MSc in development in Sweden (with a GiZ traineeship in Ethiopia) and an online 'micromasters' in Data, Economics and Development Policy from MITx. She then worked for Innovations for Poverty Action for nearly 2 years in Liberia and moved back to Moldova, where she worked for the President to help with Ukrainian refugee crisis. Moldova for Peace: https://moldovapentrupace.md/en/ Adopt a Vote, the Moldovan diaspora civic engagement group: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/why-is-moldovan-government-discriminating-against-diaspora/ MicroMasters Program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy https://micromasters.mit.edu/dedp/

In this episode Sean and Punya sit in studio and talk about the recent interview Punya and Danah had with Ethan Mollick for their Tech Trends series in which they talk with Ethan on a wide range of topics covering creativity, games, entrepreneurship and his journey to being one of the most visible scholars openly experimenting with AI in his teaching in higher education. About our Guests:Ethan MollickEthan Mollick is an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship. He leads the Wharton Interactive - an effort to democratize education using games and simulations.Danah HenriksenDanah Henriksen is an associate professor at ASU's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College whose work focuses on creativity, design thinking, and technology, as well as the relationship between creativity and mindfulness.Links and Information:Learning Futures Podcast episode 8: Extended Reality with Dan Beaupre and Tom Schmidt [listen on SimpleCast - Apple Podcasts - Spotify]DALL-E 2, AI art platformChatGPT, AI chatbotMidjourney, AI image generatorTechTrends journal [publisher link]Warr, M., Mishra, P., Henriksen, D. et al (2023). A Chat about GPT3 (and Other Forms of Alien Intelligence) with Chris Dede. TechTrends.Ethan Mollick's substackThe Breakthrough Game, the game Ethan Mollick co-designed with award winning game designer Justin GaryRichardson, C., & Mishra, P., (2017). Learning Environments that Support Student Creativity: Developing the SCALE. Thinking Skills and Creativity. [link to summary pdf from Punya's website]The Teaching Game and BlueSky Ventures Game on Wharton InteractionGertler, P., & Chioda, L. (2017, April 12). Impact of Youth Entrepreneurship Education in Uganda. Innovations for Poverty Action.The Turing Test [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy link]God of the gaps theological perspective [Wikipedia link]GPT-3, a language prediction model [link to list of models]Bing AI, from MicrosoftNoy, S & Zhang, W (2023-working paper). Experimental Evidence on the Productivity Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence. MIT. [link to pdf]Canvas, web-based learning management systemReal Genius movie [IMDb link]Punya's blog: ChatGPT3 is a *** artistMollick, E. & Mollick, L. (2022). New Modes of Learning Enabled by AI Chatbots: Three Methods and Assignments. SSRN. [link to summary article]WebSTAR, web server application for the classic Mac OS [Wikipedia link] The Spencer Foundation, foundation providing grants for research in education

What is wellbeing and how should we measure it? Representatives (Barry Grimes, Olivia Larsen, Michael Plant, Katrina Sill, Jason Schukraft, Matt Lerner) from a range of organisations (Happier Lives Institute, GiveWell, Innovations for Poverty Action, Open Philanthropy, Founders Pledge) who use different health, wealth, and subjective wellbeing metrics to determine impact, discuss the nature of wellbeing and its measurement.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why I gave AUD$12,573 to Innovations For Poverty Action, published by Henry Howard on November 29, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I gave 50% of my 1st-year doctor's salary to charity last year. This was mostly to GiveWell-recommended and The Life You Can Save-recommended charities. The largest share went to Innovations For Poverty Action, a global development research organisation that designs and runs trials of global development interventions around the world in order to find which interventions are effective. We need more global development cause discovery The main reason I favoured Innovations For Poverty Action is my feeling that the slow rate of discovery of new effective charities is a bottleneck for effective altruism. From what I can see, GiveWell has added one charity to its top recommendations in recent years (New Incentives) while it's entirely removed its list of about 10 "standout charities". I haven't noticed many new additions to The Life You Can Save's list of recommended charities in recent years. GiveWell maxxed out the funding of its top charities last year and, while they claim they now have room for hundreds of millions more dollars, this is still a drop in the pond when compared to the total amount of philanthropy and government aid money that is spent annually worldwide. Finding further effective global development causes should be top priority, so that governments and philanthropists can be advised to direct their funds more effectively. They probably know more than us Effective altruists do a lot of independent research looking at effective ways to make the world better. This is great. An example is the recent Open Philanthropy cause exploration prize. Most effective altruism enthusiasts aren't Nobel prize-winning economists nor do they have decades of experience in global development nor do they have extensive global networks to feed them information. This all probably puts the average effective giving enthusiast at a disadvantage when it comes to seeing and seizing on global development opportunities. When it comes to effective cause discovery I think it would be difficult for anyone to outperform established global development research organisations like Innovations for Poverty Action, The Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and the Center for Effective Global Action, each of which have established networks, experience, and track records. They have a good record Innovations for Poverty Action has conducted research showing that giving free bednets is more effective than charging for them, they conducted the research that led to Evidence Action's Dispensers for Safe Water program, they conducted the research around No Lean Season that first appeared to yield promising results but at scale was less promising (negative results are important too). They were recently involved in a promising trial of cash-transfers and cognitive behavioural therapy to reduce crime among at-risk young men in Liberia. You can give to them tax-deductably in Australia I've considered giving to The Jameel Poverty Action Lab or another global development research organisation. In Australia you can give to Innovations For Poverty Action via The Life You Can Save and the donation is tax-deductable. I don't know of a way to give to other global development research organisations tax-deductably from down here. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Excerpt:At EA Global: San Francisco 2022, the following organisations held a joint session to discuss their different approaches to measuring ‘good': GiveWellOpen PhilanthropyHappier Lives InstituteFounders PledgeInnovations for Poverty ActionA representative from each organisation gave a five-minute lightning talk summarising their approach before the audience broke out into table discussions. Original article:https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8whqn2GrJfvTjhov6/measuring-good-better-1Edited for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.

"You guys have the power to do the right thing so why don't you." That message to the government from an advocate who says wrongly sanctioned beneficiaries are being punished again by tax laws. Section 70A sanctions meant a woman's benefit was docked $28 a week if they could not or would not name a child's father. In 2020 the government scrapped the sanction and a number of beneficiaries got lump sum refunds after seeking reviews. But those payments are being treated as income, meaning some women have been bumped up a tax bracket leaving them with a bill rather than a bonus payment. Auckland Action Against Poverty coordinator Brooke Stanley Pao says they've challenged the Ministers of Revenue and Social Development to right the wrong and change the tax law. In a statement to Checkpoint Revenue Minister David Parker said: "I acknowledge that these payments are made to people who may be in difficult circumstances and of the hardship that this can cause. I have asked my officials to develop a solution to this, and they are working through it."

We are hearing more about the Cost of Living Crisis every day, but what can churches do now and to prepare for the difficult winter ahead? How do we read the Bible in the context of poverty and how can the church act prophetically?Natalie Williams from Jubilee Plus is seeing the impact of the cost of living crisis now and gives amazing practical tips for churches to prepare now for the winter ahead. The TLG training that Natalie mentioned can be found here.To explore becoming a Jubilee Plus partner church click here. This is a brilliant way to get support, training and expertise on anti-poverty action.Chris Shannahan Principal Investigator from the Life on the Breadline Project shares his unique and important research into poverty in the UK, and how the church is responding. What is the church doing with its influence and roots, or should we be doing more? To find out more and sign the Anti-Poverty charter here.You can invite someone to speak about the charter in your church, and the Life on the Breadline project website has some fantastic resources for churches and small groups.

Dan is out this week. But Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, Director and Senior Fellow for CSIS Africa, guest hosts to discusses the digital revolution in Africa with Togo's Minister of Digital Economy and Transformation, Cina Lawson, and Better Than Cash Alliance's Lead of Africa Policy and Partnerships, Nshuti Mbabazi. Cina shares the innovative digital strategies Togo employed to alleviate the poverty exacerbated by Covid-19, including how they used AI and partnered with UC Berkeley and Innovations for Poverty Action. Meanwhile, Nshuti stresses the importance of financial inclusion, public-private partnerships, and the hopeful prospects of Africa's further digital innovation in upcoming years.

Big Loans to Small Businesses: Predicting Winners and Losers in an Entrepreneurial Lending Experiment, Mental Health Therapy as a Core Strategy for Increasing Human Capital: Evidence from Ghana, Randomization for Causality, Ethnography for Mechanisms: Illiquid Savings for Liquor in an Autarkic Society, and Pathways out of Extreme Poverty: Tackling Psychosocial and Capital Constraints with a Multi-faceted Social Protection Program in Niger Scientific Sense ® by Gill Eapen: Prof. Dean Karlan is Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University, and the Founder and President of Innovations for Poverty Action, a non-profit organization dedicated to discovering and promoting solutions to global poverty problems. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo2wiIHPM35xPawotek2IDA/join --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/scientificsense/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/scientificsense/support

The Fairer Future Collaboration modelled different households receiving benefits and found they are simply not liveable for almost all families and beneficiaries, spokesperson Max Harris joined Tova to explain.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If someone said a global health and development programme was sustainable, participatory, and holistic, you'd have to guess that they were saying something positive. But according to today's guest Karen Levy - deworming pioneer and veteran of Innovations for Poverty Action, Evidence Action, and Y Combinator - each of those three concepts has become so fashionable that they're at risk of being seriously overrated and applied where they don't belong. Links to learn more, summary and full transcript. Such concepts might even cause harm - trying to make a project embody all three is as likely to ruin it as help it flourish. First, what do people mean by 'sustainability'? Usually they mean something like the programme will eventually be able to continue without needing further financial support from the donor. But how is that possible? Governments, nonprofits, and aid agencies aim to provide health services, education, infrastructure, financial services, and so on - and all of these require ongoing funding to pay for materials and staff to keep them running. Given that someone needs to keep paying, Karen tells us that in practice, 'sustainability' is usually a euphemism for the programme at some point being passed on to someone else to fund - usually the national government. And while that can be fine, the national government of Kenya only spends $400 per person to provide each and every government service - just 2% of what the US spends on each resident. Incredibly tight budgets like that are typical of low-income countries. 'Participatory' also sounds nice, and inasmuch as it means leaders are accountable to the people they're trying to help, it probably is. But Karen tells us that in the field, 'participatory' usually means that recipients are expected to be involved in planning and delivering services themselves. While that might be suitable in some situations, it's hardly something people in rich countries always want for themselves. Ideally we want government healthcare and education to be high quality without us having to attend meetings to keep it on track - and people in poor countries have as many or more pressures on their time. While accountability is desirable, an expectation of participation can be as much a burden as a blessing. Finally, making a programme 'holistic' could be smart, but as Karen lays out, it also has some major downsides. For one, it means you're doing lots of things at once, which makes it hard to tell which parts of the project are making the biggest difference relative to their cost. For another, when you have a lot of goals at once, it's hard to tell whether you're making progress, or really put your mind to focusing on making one thing go extremely well. And finally, holistic programmes can be impractically expensive - Karen tells the story of a wonderful 'holistic school health' programme that, if continued, was going to cost 3.5 times the entire school's budget. In today's in-depth conversation, Karen Levy and I chat about the above, as well as: * Why it pays to figure out how you'll interpret the results of an experiment ahead of time * The trouble with misaligned incentives within the development industry * Projects that don't deliver value for money and should be scaled down * How Karen accident

Abram Lutes is the provincial coordinator for the New Brunswick Common Front for Social Justice.

In this episode of “Keen On”, Andrew is joined by Eric Protzer, the author of “Reclaiming Populism: How Economic Fairness Can Win Back Disenchanted Voters”. Prior to joining the Center for International Development's Growth Lab in 2019, Eric Protzer worked on an Innovations for Poverty Action randomized control trial concerning Ghanaian labor markets, researched energy and technological change in the developing world at MIT, taught in Vanuatu, and helped build two tech startups. His research interests include the application of data science techniques to policy problems and the impact of technology on the economy. Visit our website: https://lithub.com/story-type/keen-on/ Email Andrew: a.keen@me.com Watch the show live on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajkeen Watch the show live on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankeen/ Watch the show live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lithub Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiteraryHub/videos Subscribe to Andrew's newsletter: https://andrew2ec.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: We're Rethink Priorities. AMA , published by Peter Wildeford on the AI Alignment Forum. Hi there, We're the staff at Rethink Priorities and we would like you to Ask Us Anything! We'll be answering all questions tomorrow on Friday, 13 December. About the Org Rethink Priorities is an EA research organization focused on influencing funders and key decision-makers to improve decisions within EA and EA-aligned organizations. You might know of our work on the impact of cage-free corporate campaigns, invertebrate welfare as a cause area, the risk of nuclear winter, or running the EA Survey, among other projects. We spend 80% of our time working on research relevant to farmed and wild animal welfare. You can see all our work to date here. Over the next two years we plan to try to find new actionable interventions to improve animal welfare, further analyze nuclear risks, use polling to find winning policy changes, study EA movement growth, and much more. About the Team Marcus A. Davis - Lead Researcher Marcus A. Davis works on Rethink Priorities strategy and oversees research. He previously co-founded Charity Science Health, where he systematically analyzed global poverty interventions, led cost-effectiveness analyses, and oversaw all technical aspects of the project. Before joining the Charity Science Health team, he ran Effective Altruism Chicago and worked with Rethink Charity coordinating outreach to local EA groups around the globe. Peter Hurford - Lead Researcher Peter Hurford works on Rethink Priorities strategy and oversees research. He also is a Data Scientist at DataRobot. He co-founded Rethink Charity, and is on the board of Charity Science Health and Animal Charity Evaluators. He has reviewed and produced research on cause prioritization and effective altruism since 2013. David Moss - Senior Research Analyst David Moss is a Senior Research Analyst at Rethink Priorities. He previously worked for Charity Science and has worked on the EA Survey for several years. David studied Philosophy at Cambridge and is an academic researcher of moral psychology. Kim Cuddington - Research Analyst Kim Cuddington is a Research Analyst at Rethink Priorities and is an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo. She has a PhD in Zoology, a Masters in Biology, and a Masters in Philosophy. She also has a background in ecology and mathematical modeling. Derek Foster - Research Analyst Derek Foster is a Research Analyst at Rethink Priorities. He studied philosophy and politics as an undergraduate, followed by public health and health economics at master's level. Before joining RP, Derek worked on the Global Happiness Policy Report and various other projects related to global health, education, and subjective well-being. Luisa Rodriguez - Research Analyst Luisa Rodriguez is a Research Analyst at Rethink Priorities and a Visiting Researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute. Previously, she conducted cost-effectiveness evaluations of nonprofit and government programs at ImpactMatters, Innovations for Poverty Action, and GiveWell. Saulius Šimčikas - Research Analyst Saulius Šimčikas is a Research Analyst at Rethink Priorities. Previously, he was a research intern at Animal Charity Evaluators, organized Effective Altruism events in the UK and Lithuania, and worked as a programmer. Neil Dullaghan - Junior Research Analyst Neil Dullaghan is a Junior Research Analyst at Rethink Priorities. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in Political and Social Science at the European University Institute. He has volunteered for Charity Entrepreneurship and Animal Charity Evaluators. Before joining RP, Neil worked as a data manager for an online voter platform. Jason Schukraft - Junior Research Analyst Jason Schukraft is a Junior Research Analyst at Rethink Priorities. Before joining the RP team, Jason ear...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA Philippines' Strong Progress and Learnings in 2019, published by BrianTan on the AI Alignment Forum. Hi, EAs! I'm Brian Tan, co-founder of Effective Altruism Philippines. I'm writing this post to share the great progress we've made in starting and growing the EA Philippines community in our first full year in 2019. We've learned a lot of things along the way, and we'd like to share what worked and what hasn't for us here. How EA Philippines Started EA Philippines was first started by Kate Lupango in September 2018. Through help from LEAN and Wanyi Zeng (of EA Singapore), she was able to connect with other EA community builders in other countries and get resources on how to start a local community. She created a Facebook page for EA Philippines, and she posted on a Facebook volunteer group looking for volunteers to join the EA Philippines community. Jeffrey Escobal reached out to her to express interest after seeing that post. Kate also posted looking for mentors in the EA Group Organizers Facebook group. David Nash (of EA London) connected Kate with Tanya Quijano, a Filipina who had previously attended an EA London event. Finally, I found the page on Facebook a few weeks after Kate made it, and decided to reach out. The four of us met for the first time in November 2018, and decided to co-found the group and start growing the community. From left to right: Kate, Tanya, Jeffrey, and I (Brian) When we started, we had three main goals: 1. To increase awareness about EA in Manila 2. To build a friendly community for people interested in EA 3. To get Filipinos to increase their involvement in or donations to EA's top cause areas We've mostly been successful at the first two goals, but we aren't satisfied with our progress on the third. We'll talk more about that towards the end of the post. Key Outcomes in 2019 (our 1st year) 1. We've now identified 11 contributors and 7 participants in our local community (including us four core team members). We classified them based on CEA's Concentric Circles Model and our evaluation of where they fit in the funnel. 2. Around May 2019, we successfully applied for a general group funding grant from CEA, which allowed us to fund our operations from May to December 2019. Later, we successfully applied for a grant that covers January to December 2020. 3. In 2019, we held a total of 14 events - usually doing one per month. We now average 20 attendees per event, and we get an average of four “repeat” attendees per event (not including us co-founders). 4. We've been able to partner with the local offices of EA-recommended organizations such as Oxfam, Innovations for Poverty Action, and IDInsight, and have representatives from their orgs speak and attend our events. 5. We've also met or had calls with members from various EA communities, such as EA Singapore, Toronto, Montreal, Norway, and London, and with members of EA organizations, such as GiveWell, LEAN, CEA, Rethink Charity, and The Life You Can Save. 6. 5 student members of EA PH started a chapter named EA Blue at the Ateneo De Manila University in August, and they recruited 60 students to join their chapter. On Organizing Events Photos from some of our events in 2019 When we started, we didn't know anyone else in Manila who was interested in EA. We were all fairly new to the movement. As such, we decided to focus on holding monthly events in order to spread awareness about EA and its various facets and cause areas. We worked on EA PH part-time, on top of our day jobs. At first, we were paying for expenses out of our own pockets. Thankfully, we got funding from CEA to fund our events from May to December 2019. This table includes information on all the events we've held so far: To explain some things about the table above: The March 26 talk was given by Yuna Liang, a Senior Research ...

Lincoln Lau is back on the podcast! Nathan Mallonee interviews Lincoln, who is the director of research at International Care Ministries (ICM) in the Philippines. ICM has been conducting different RCTs in partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action, and Lincoln comes back to talk to us since they published the results of their first RCT and how they're using RCTs today. To find out more about ICM, visit: https://www.caremin.com Book recommendation: Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Vox's Dylan Matthews joins Matt and Jerusalem to talk about whether the Federal Reserve can use monetary policy to fight climate change and how the ideal Fed Chair may not exist. Plus, a new study about the effectiveness of masking against Covid-19 reignites the debate on public health messaging around the pandemic. Also, Matt wants experts to stay in their lanes.  Resources: “Will Biden Make a Historic Mistake at the Fed?” by J. Bradford Delong (Project Syndicate; Sep 1, 2021) “Strengthening the Financial System to Meet the Challenge of Climate Change” by Lael Brainard (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; Dec 18, 2020) “The Planet Depends on the Next Federal Reserve Chair” by David Dayen (The American Prospect; Aug 27, 2021) “The Planet Needs Jerome Powell” by Robinson Meyer (The Atlantic; Sep 1, 2021) “On Maximizing Employment, a Case for Caution” by Raphael Bostic (Policy Hub: Macroblog; Oct 26, 2018) White paper: “The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh” by Mushfiq Mobarak et al. (Innovations for Poverty Action; Sep 1, 2021) Hosts: Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias), Slowboring.com Jerusalem Demsas (@JerusalemDemsas), Policy Reporter, Vox Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), Senior Correspondent Credits: Ness Smith-Savedoff, Producer & Engineer Erikk Geannikis, Producer, Talk Podcasts As the Biden administration gears up, we'll help you understand this unprecedented burst of policymaking. Sign up for The Weeds newsletter each Friday: vox.com/weeds-newsletter. The Weeds is a Vox Media Podcast Network production. Want to support The Weeds? Please consider making a contribution to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts About Vox Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Follow Us: Vox.com Facebook group: The Weeds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Regularly assessing the impact of your nonprofit’s initiatives and even its mission is more important than ever to all stakeholders including your donors. In this episode, Bob DiMeo and Devon Francis speak with Annie Duflo, executive director at Innovations for Poverty Action. Together, they explore the steps involved in using effective data that fits your … Continue reading Episode 20 – How To Use Data and Rigorous Evaluation to Help Achieve Your Nonprofit’s Goals — With Annie Duflo →

Annie Duflo, the Executive Director of Innovations for Poverty Action, joins Charity Talks to discuss IPA’s mission to create high quality evidence for the best interventions to alleviate poverty. IPA has programs that improve education in developing countries and reduce human trafficking in Africa. It also has tested the effectiveness of direct payments to those living in poverty, to name just a few of its hundreds of programs. By deeply studying these issues, and then working with governments to put in place the most impactful policies for the poor, IPA is making a huge difference in reducing suffering around the world. (0:28).   Website:  https://www.poverty-action.org/  

On April 1st, Annie Dufalo, executive director of Innovation for Poverty Action was hosted by Seth Green and Abol Jalilvand for a conversation on global poverty and wealth inequality. We hope you enjoy these excerpts from the program. 

Originally recorded on March 12, 2021 Alix Zwane, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Innovation Fund, continued the discussion after a virtual CID Speaker Series event held on March 12, 2021 exploring their work further with CID Student Ambassador Sama Kubba. Successfully meeting international development goals in the post pandemic era calls for a renewed commitment to honesty both on a micro level and a macro level about what development assistance can and should seek to achieve. The debate about official assistance is often bookended by, at best, misplaced good intent and, at worst, falsehoods told to reinforce the status quo. Supporting innovation and R&D is at the heart of both an honest development agenda and the clearest path toward pushing decision-making more locally while still being true to our values around environmental, social, and governance standards such as gender equity and climate resilience. Alix Peterson Zwane is Chief Executive Officer of the Global Innovation Fund. She has 20 years of experience advancing the agenda of evidence-based aid and international development as an investor, a social entrepreneur, and an innovator herself. Alix has worked at the intersection of the evidence and innovation agendas from a diverse set of posts. She was the first employee and Executive Director at Evidence Action, a non-profit that develops service delivery models to scale evidence-based programs. Under Alix's leadership, Evidence Action catalyzed school-based deworming for hundreds of millions of children around the world, and safe drinking water for millions of people in four countries. Alix launched Evidence Action Beta, an incubator for innovations in development. Alix has also advocated for evidence-based philanthropy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google.org, where she set strategy and made investments to support new public service models that work for the poor and developed models for outcome-based grant-making. She began her career in management consulting and was a member of the faculty of the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at University of California, Berkeley. Alix has published in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and elsewhere. She previously served on the board of directors of Innovations for Poverty Action, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, and Evidence Action. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University and is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Born and raised in Colorado, she divides her time between Washington, D.C. and London.

Dean Karlan is the Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance Kellogg School of Management, and co-director of the Global Poverty Research Lab at Northwestern University.  He is the Founder and President of Innovations for Poverty Action, a non-profit organization dedicated to discovering and promoting solutions to global poverty problems, and working to scale-up successful ideas through implementation and dissemination to policymakers, practitioners, investors and donors.  His research focuses on development and behavioral economics, and he is on the Board of Directors of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Dean joins me today to discuss his academic career and why he decided to be a founder. There appears to be a theme with Dean's academic work and we discuss how that influences the companies that he has founded. We discuss the frustration that comes when the evidence that you are generating are not changing policy. We also talk about his other startups Stickk and ImpactMatters. “Know what problem you're trying to solve”… “as clear as you can in your mind, so that you are able to focus on thinking through whether what you're doing is really addressing that problem.” - Dean KarlanToday on Startups for Good we cover:How IPA (Innovations for Poverty Action) worksRandomized Controlled Trials - the needs and criticism that comes with themThe size and scale of IPA today and some of the challenges they have facedMethodology of a lean startup and did he use it for IPAThe acquisition of ImpactMatters by Charity Navigator How to measure impact of a charityLessons learned from being a founderConnect with Professor Karlan on LinkedIn or TwitterSubscribe, Rate & Share Your Favorite Episodes!Thanks for tuning into today's episode of Startups For Good with your host, Miles Lasater. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast listening app.Don't forget to visit our website, connect with Miles on Twitter or LinkedIn, and share your favorite episodes across social media. For more information about The Giving Circle

Today Crystal talks with returning guest Marcy Bowers from the Statewide Poverty Action Network. Mary gives an update on the continued struggle for low income families as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, and how the Washington State legislature is seeking to address this. A huge takeaway from this episode: Get involved and give the legislature your input! Resources: Follow the working families tax exemption discussed on the show here: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1297&Year=2021&Initiative=false  Provide your input by calling the legislative hotline at 1-800-562-6000. Sign up to participate in committee hearings before the legislature here: https://leg.wa.gov/legislature/Pages/Participating.aspx  Read Marcy's op-ed advocating for continued financial support for low-income communities in our state here: https://crosscut.com/opinion/2020/06/ongoing-stimulus-low-income-residents-can-save-wa-communities  Transcript: Crystal Fincher (00:13): Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk to political hacks and policy wonks to gather insight into the local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work and provide behind the scenes perspectives on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.   Today, I'm happy to announce that Marcy Bowers is our guest. She's the Director of the Poverty Action Network, and we are thrilled to have her with us today. I guess I would just start off by asking, what does the Statewide Poverty Action Network do and what brought you to the organization?   Marcy Bowers (01:07): Well, hi. Thank you so much for having me today. It is always a pleasure to talk to you and to be here. Poverty Action is an organizing and advocacy organization. We believe that organizing is a key component to doing advocacy work and policy change work. We work with people with low incomes from around the state, we hear from them about what policies we should change, and then we work with them to share their stories and to change those policies. And that is at the state level.   And I got into this work, it goes back a long time. I grew up with a single mom. She had to make all sorts of creative choices when I was a kid about how we were going to afford some of the basic food items, and it really stuck with me about - you really can't have real justice and you can't address a number of sociological problems if you are not addressing poverty as a key part of that challenge. And so I feel really lucky that I get paid to do organizing on something I might do as a volunteer without it.   Crystal Fincher (02:16): This is so critically important right now. This is on a lot of people's minds, even more now because of the pandemic and how much this is stressing people's finances. More people than ever are out of work. It's a very challenging time for people health-wise - lots of people don't have insurance and they're trying to navigate through that. That is a very oftentimes cost prohibitive and can put people in financial jeopardy, just dealing with that system. And the housing prices are through the roof. The minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. And so everything has gotten more expensive. People are not getting paid enough to keep up with it. This is a really big problem. I guess when you're looking at the state of things right now in Washington, where are we and what can help?   Marcy Bowers (03:14): That's a big question, but I think you are absolutely right, that it is harder and harder for people to meet their basic needs to make ends meet. We travel around the state hosting listening sessions - of course this year they've been on Zoom, to hear what people have to say. And probably the number one and number two things that we hear are, we don't have enough money and the costs are going up. So it's a big economic observation that people make, but it's something that people who are living with this reality day-to-day will also tell you are their top two concerns across the board.   I think one thing that is always interesting when you kind of look at these big picture things is that often the big economic picture masks some of the deeper disparities, whether that's looking at our economic numbers, excuse me, as a state by race, whether that's looking at the numbers of people who are living in deep poverty. Those numbers have all gotten worse. Even before the pandemic, those numbers were moving in the wrong direction. More people were living in deep poverty. The disparities for black and indigenous women in particular were going up. And those were trending in the wrong direction. And I would say that the pandemic really has done two things there. One, it's made those things worse. Amazon stakeholders and shareholders are doing great right now because everybody also turned to online shopping, but that hasn't changed in most low-income communities and communities of color.   The other thing I think that the pandemic did was put a spotlight on the disparities that we had before. I think for people who are falling on hard times for maybe the first time in their life, they had the opportunity to say gosh, maybe I do need to rely on some forms of assistance every once in a while. Maybe there is a role for government to play in some of this. Maybe we don't have to assume that businesses will fix all of this and the private sector will fix all of this.   I absolutely agree with you that we are in really difficult, hard times economically for a lot of people, and there's a lot to be sad and disappointed and frustrated about. And I think there are glimmers and moments of hope to look for around how people's perspective on this is changing. Obviously the pandemic does not care whether you are wealthy or not, as it's attempting to infect your body.   Crystal Fincher (05:58): Right. And it doesn't care if you're wealthy or not, or if your neighbors are. And the pandemic has definitely reinforced to a lot of people that we're all connected in ways that maybe we didn't appreciate enough before, and both the health and economic wellbeing of our neighbors impacts our lives too. And the better we're all doing, the better we all do. You talk about some glimmers of hope. Right now we are at the beginning of the state legislative session and, as you alluded to, people who are extremely well off, the uber rich have actually gotten richer during this pandemic. And it's also made people at the bottom struggle even more. The issue of income inequality and the difference in what we're asking, the burden that we're asking the extremely rich people to bear versus poor people, couldn't be more different. And there are some proposals to address this in the legislature. What can help?   Marcy Bowers (07:07): I think so my first glimmer of hope, and I appreciate that you just serve that up to me on a T, is I do think the proposal to tax capital gains and to use some of that to fund a Working Families Tax Credit or a state version of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, I think that's getting more traction than it's ever had before. I think it is being talked about fairly seriously now. I think there are more votes than we've seen. I will tell you sort of on an organizational, personal note, we worked really hard on getting the bill introduced to reform - reform's not the right word. You can edit me out later. To update and modernize the Working Families Tax Credit and make it more inclusive. That bill was introduced on Monday and by Tuesday we had 46 sponsors in the House on that bill. That is almost 50% of the State House signing on to create and fund and modernize an Earned Income Tax Credit. And that also makes it eligible to ITIN filers, who are often, but not always, immigrant tax filers. A little known other community of people who often use ITIN filers are domestic violence and intimate partner violence survivors. For confidentiality, they use a number that's different than their Social Security number when filing. And so that would be opening up the tax credit to them, but then also making it more available to the people at the lowest income levels in our state.   That is a big glimmer of hope to me. That's a ray of hope, maybe more than even a glimmer, but that has so much traction and so much excitement. And the governor has been talking about it, which is also really exciting.   Crystal Fincher (08:55): That is very exciting. And I'm really happy to hear that it does include a lot of immigrant communities that are so often excluded from safety nets and help, which doesn't make much sense overall when we look at the impact that that has on our communities and the benefit that it would offer our communities to take care of people who are such a critical and instrumental part of our community. They've been left out of previous COVID relief and so much, so that is very welcome news to hear that they aren't being left behind this time.   And other communities, like you talked about, the intimate partner violence, people who've experienced that. Oftentimes there are several groups who are overlooked, and so kudos for making sure that you're bringing everyone along, which of course an organization like yours should be doing, but sometimes it doesn't happen that way. So, that's great.   What exactly would this do? If someone is in a position to receive this, what could they expect?   Marcy Bowers (10:07): The short version of the story is they can expect some cash. So the way we have modeled it is starting at the very lowest income scales, you get the full benefit, which would be - around $500 would be the benefit, and then it scales up a little bit more with kids. And one of the things, in addition to it just being cash that people can spend however they want and need to meet the needs that they have in their families, is that there's not hoops to jump through to get it. I am a big believer in our state's safety net programs. I think it is absolutely crucial to do that, and I am troubled by how many hoops people have to jump through to just get basic assistance. And I think one of the amazing things about something like this is it's a little bit like a stimulus check, or we're calling it a recovery rebate, where you just get it. You don't have to jump through hoops. You don't have to spend a bunch of time proving your hardship. You don't have to tell your trauma over and over and over again. You just get to receive cash without a bunch of strings attached to it, that you can spend on whatever you and your family need.   That, to me, is also something that gives me a lot of hope - that that conversation where we might, as a society, stop questioning the decision making abilities of people who just don't have money, but somehow they can't make a good position. That narrative needs to go. And I think this is another glimmer of hope that this is getting traction and we are beginning to see a shift in how people talk about this kind of stuff.   Crystal Fincher (11:45): I completely agree. The conversation around direct cash assistance, which is the most effective way to provide help, and, as you talked about, it has a direct stimulating effect on the economy. So much data to back that up, that if we give people who need it the most – money - they spend it on things they need in their communities. It helps all of our local businesses who are employing our other neighbors. It just makes sense.   You talk about we don't make people jump through hoops. The conversation has evolved on this and I have learned a lot over time on this. We talk about, well, what if people get it who don't deserve it or who don't need it? When we put so many barriers before people, it just makes it harder to get it to the people who really do need it and it just prevents it from helping the people who it needs to help and stimulating the economy.   If we need to claw back money, you want to do that. You can do that through taxation on the other end, but it should not slow down how we help people and the assistance that we provide. So I appreciate you driving that conversation and you driving that policy, because it is critically important and we need it now more than ever. Families need it now more than ever, and it's really time we stop enabling conversations that make it seem like being poor is some kind of moral failing, a lack of education, that they're just not worthy of having nice things, needing to prove that they deserve it somehow. People deserve to have their basic needs met and to not be insecure with housing or food or any of their other necessities. So thank you so much for doing work in that area. I'm really excited to hear that it's had such a positive reception so far.   What's the bill number and what can people do if they want to support that, or I guess, how should they contact their legislators? I assume it will be having a hearing at some point in time, so how can they help advocate for this?   Marcy Bowers (14:06): Well, the bill number is... There will be a Senate bill in the coming days, but right now the House bill number is 1297. So one, two, nine, seven, and the prime sponsor of it is Representative Thai, and I think she's done an amazing job. I think this is sort of this other piece of the conversation that would give me a glimmer of hope, and then I really will come back and answer your question about how to be involved - is that I think after the 2020 election, we also saw a new class of freshmen that is our most diverse in history. So based on our most racially diverse, more women than we've ever had before, more of a diversity of experiences, more people who have an experience with poverty and hardship. There's a previously incarcerated legislator now, there's organizers, and that is also very, very, very exciting to me as an organizer, to see people who are excited to come to the legislature and represent their history and their communities and their stories, and speak up and upset a little bit of the status quo that sort of holds things exactly where they've been.   Crystal Fincher (15:17): You're listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. And our guest today is Marcy Bowers from the Statewide Poverty Action Network.   Marcy Bowers (15:32): As far as how to take action, there will be hearings coming up, but probably the easiest thing to share over the radio about how to take action is the legislative hotline number. And that phone number is 1(800) 562-6000. And I love the legislative hotline number because you literally call it and some actual live people answer the phone and they take your address and they ask you what you want to tell your legislators, and they literally type a message that goes directly to your legislators.   Just on a funny note, I made it my personal mission one year to have the hotline receptionist, or the folks who answered the call there, to know who I was, and so I called the legislative hotline every single day for an entire legislative session. Until finally toward the end of session, it was maybe sometime in March, I called and they said, "Legislative hotline, what's your message?" And I said, "Hi, this is Marcy." And they were like, "Hi, Marcy." I felt like I had had a big achievement.   Crystal Fincher (16:48): Oh my goodness. That makes sense. And great tip because super easy, super accessible, to call in and they will give your message to your legislator. Because sometimes it can be hard to figure out, who should I even talk to? Who are my legislators? What's going on? Another thing, as I think about it, that is a little bit different this year, that is definitely different this year, but that can make engaging with your legislators more accessible, is that because we are in this pandemic, they are having a lot of committee meetings and committee hearings via Zoom. And people can sign in and testify via Zoom from wherever they're at. So this has made it a lot more accessible and possible for people to get involved. They don't have to drive to Olympia to have a hearing.    They just started not that long ago having satellite sites but still, you had to get to a satellite site. Now you can sign on to Zoom, as so many of us have done so often, especially since the pandemic. So that's another option that's available if people are following the bill number. And you can Google it, it'll take you to the page and it'll actually just tell you when the - you can see when committee meetings and hearings are coming up, if you want more information on that or any other bills. So just ways to get more involved.   I mentioned before we started recording, speaking of the new legislators that are in, we have a very diverse class and just elected a number of black women into the legislature. I just received Representative Kirsten Harris-Talley's first legislative email update, and so that just made me feel warm and fuzzy as I was reading that, so that was a little exciting shortly before we started recording today.   I guess that goes into other questions. So we've got capital gains, we've got tax credit relief. What else is there that can help, either in the legislature or even looking at policies that could be helpful at the more local level, whether it's through cities with city councils or county councils. What are policies that we need to be implementing right now and what are policies that people can go to their elected representatives to say, this is what we are expecting you to do to help?   Marcy Bowers (19:29): I think it's a good question. It's a big question, again. You're good at the big questions. I think if I were to try and think about kind of what a theme is for this - and it is that individual families and small communities cannot do this alone. And what we need are some of the bigger institutions of our world to play a part in this. Part of why I frame it that way is that during the last recession, almost across the board, states and counties and municipalities did a ton of cost cutting and austerity measures. They gutted their budgets. And some of our priorities this year are still pieces of undoing the mess that was done during the great recession a decade ago. And so I think that if I were to try and think about thematically what is it that the state and local governments need to do, it is to recognize that now is the time for investing in our communities, for bolstering and shoring up the economic situations of our institutions and of our communities and our families. That this is not the time for sort of belt tightening and all of those other weird euphemisms we use for essentially eliminating social programming. Now is not the time for that.   I think that message is being heard. I think that's being heard at many levels at this point. And I think that it needs to be a continuous drum beat. And I think one of the key clear components, in addition to direct cash assistance, that I am probably most worried about at just about every level of government is what to do when the eviction moratoriums end. How are we going to ensure that people have some way to pay their back rent, to pay their current rent, to pay their future rent, and not have an incredibly huge spike in homelessness. That it would be not only cruel, but it would also be a public health nightmare in addition to that and on top of that.   I think cities are looking at this. I think counties are looking at this. I know the state is looking at this. Theoretically Congress is looking at this. And I think that that component of having a plan for what happens when eviction moratoriums. And when eventually when these sort of state of emergencies end, all of these measures that we have rightfully put in place during this emergency at all levels of government - at some point they're going to end - and it would be a gigantic mistake and incredibly cruel and set us back in a public health measure if we don't have a plan for what happens when the state of emergency is officially over.   Crystal Fincher (22:33): What should that plan be? I mean, is it wholesale forgiveness? There are questions related to that in terms of small landlords versus large or corporate landlords. It seems like there needs to be rent forgiveness and some mortgage relief for smaller landlords. What is the package of remedies that you're looking at to actually address this? Because you're exactly right. We're kind of kicking the can down the road - we're literally kicking the can down the road, and pressing a pause button, but we are not undoing the accumulation of debt.   As we all know, if people are having a hard time paying their bills right now, there's no way they're going to come up with oftentimes 5 or 10, a multi-thousand dollar balloon payment on top of all of their other bills. That's just not realistic. So we're going to be looking at an eviction tsunami whenever this ends. And, like you said, it would be a public health crisis. It would be a public budget crisis. As you talked about, those austerity measures are actually more expensive in the long run. It costs less to keep someone in their home than to remedy the situation once they do become homeless and experience all of the other challenges that are related to that. We do pay for that as a society. We cannot act like we don't experience consequences from allowing our neighbors to become homeless.   If we can take action to prevent that, that is the responsibility, and the lesson that we've learned from going through this before, as you mentioned. So what should be put into place in tandem with the ending of the eviction moratoriums?   Marcy Bowers (24:34): I should be clear, I'm not a housing policy expert. We've got some good friends who do that. But I do think it is probably some combination of rental assistance, some forgiveness in some settings, probably some payment plans, some additional work on building more housing, because I think that's one of the aspects that isn't talked about quite as much - is that rightfully there's fewer evictions, but that also means that the people who were homeless at the beginning of an eviction moratorium didn't actually see any turnover in the existing housing stock, so they have been having a much harder time finding a place to live.   So we still have, even with all the temporary measures, we still have this problem of a lack of affordable housing. I don't want to totally take our eye off the prize of the need, it's not even a prize, take our eye off the larger problem of needing more affordable housing overall. I suspect, not being a housing expert, that it will be a variety and a combination of things. I know our parent agency provides nonprofit housing and it was a pretty interesting budget conversation when we had no income from our very low income tenants for 8 months of a 12 month fiscal cycle. And I'm aware of that challenge across non-profit housing as well. And I don't think they should be evicted and have to pay their rent right now when there's no opportunity for work.   Crystal Fincher (26:18): Part of this conversation as a society that we have to reckon with, that, I think, our common discourse does not currently, is we have to be realistic about what the consequences are of the actions that we take. And we hear so often, there was just another very online conversation about raising the minimum wage and all of the various reactions to that going, "It's going to put everyone out of work and it's going to make a Big Mac cost $20," which is all of the conversation that we hear every time that the minimum wage is raised. And as we saw in Seattle, the sky did not fall. In fact, it helped a number of people and businesses.   As we are navigating through this, I think we need to be realistic in that, yeah, we are asking people who have $60 million to maybe have $57 million. That we're going to ask them to carry some kind of tax burden. We don't have an income tax in this state. We have the most regressive tax structure, meaning that we ask poor people to pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than we ask rich people, and we have a system of fees to compensate for the taxes that we are not asking from people who can so easily afford them.   We have billionaires that are here in our state, who have gotten billions of dollars richer just during the pandemic, and what we're really talking about is, should we be putting people onto the street or should we be asking people like Jeff Bezos to maybe deal with $298 billion instead of $300 billion. That's what we're talking about. And I think that we just have to continue to focus on really having the scale of the conversation and what is a consequence of asking for a tiny percentage more in taxes for people who actually can't spend the amount of money that they have in their lifetimes versus the consequences of not providing those taxes and not having any way to keep people in their homes, or keep them fed, or to have those necessities in life. That's certainly a soap box that I have hopped on before, I'll continue to hop on, but I am comfortable asking someone to scrape by with $57 million instead of $60 million, because it can benefit so many other people.   I guess as we are wrapping this up, what message would you send to people who are listening, whether they're in the position of being in need of help right now or wondering what they can do to help?   Marcy Bowers (29:17): I think my message is, in some ways, it's always the same, which is that now is the opportunity to speak up. Now is the opportunity to tell people why this is important, to speak your truth to power, to stand up. I think as the Trump administration comes to a close, I think we saw the consequences of staying silent when voices really needed to come out and say something different. And this is the time. This is our time. This is the time to come out and say, this is what we want to see, this history is unjust and it can be fixed. Policy problems and a decision to not have a capital gains tax or an income tax is what got us into this mess and changing that policy can help be part of the strategy to get us out of this mess.   It's time to stand up and say something and to not be afraid that your voice doesn't matter. I've heard often over the years, "Well, I don't know. I'm just one person. Does it really matter?" And it really does. Legislators hear a whole lot of facts and figures, they get a lot of statistics, they get a lot of dollar amounts, but what they don't necessarily get a lot of are people telling them why a change is needed and how it would impact them. Whether that's calling the hotline number, whether that's signing up to testify via the legislative website. Even if it's not, even if you're not ready to testify, you can still sign up and say, I'm pro this bill, or I'm con this bad bill. You don't have to be ready necessarily to speak up. You can just be ready to put your name out there, excuse me, and say you support something. But now's the time.   Crystal Fincher (30:58): Well said. Very well said. Thank you so much for joining us today. We will include in our show notes, as we do all the time, a full text transcript of the show in addition to the audio, and we will include links to both the information about the bills that we talked about and information on how you can sign up to testify or just to signal that you are for or against a particular bill. So make sure to make your voice heard, the legislature is considering these issues right now, and it really does matter if they hear from you or not. That does make a difference. Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you next time.   Marcy Bowers (31:43): Thank you so much.

En este episodio, el investigador Braulio Torres nos habla de las implicaciones negativas de llamar a las enfermedades relacionadas a la alimentación como “crónicas y progresivas”, “no transmisibles”, o como “enfermedades individuales” que son causadas por malos  estilos  de  vida;  y  como  podría  valer  la  pena crecer las definiciones para nombrarlas como “enfermedades de transmisión social”, “enfermedades causadas por el contexto” y como “enfermedades reversibles”. También platicamos de la permacultura como un espacio de aprendizaje comprometido con la agroecología y la biodiversidad, y que busca ser un  espacio de reflexión para transformar los sistemas alimentarios.Braulio Torres tiene una licenciatura en psicología, una maestría en políticas públicas en la Universidad de Chicago  y  una  estancia académica, en  la  Escuela  de  Estudios  Urbanos  y  Planeación  de  MIT. Braulio  fue Director de Evaluación en la Fundación IDEA y Director en México deInnovations for Poverty Action. Hoy es consultor del Programa de Empleos Verdes y Transición Justa de la Organización Mundial del Trabajo.

CEO of LEGO Foundation, John Goodwin, joins Alberto Lidji to talk about $100m grants in support of young children in refugee settings; the value of learning through play; and achieving systemic change.   A fascinating episode taking listeners from the LEGO Foundation’s origins in the 1980s to the present day.  We hear how the LEGO Group supports the Foundation and how the Foundation is focused on redefining play and re-imagining learning.   Learning through play is increasingly gaining traction. It is important that the activity in learning through play is meaningful for the child, that it is iterative, that it actively engages the child, and that it is socially interactive and joyful.     The LEGO Foundation's grants are impressive. Over the past two years, the LEGO Foundation has made two grants of $100 million, each in support of early childhood in refugee settings.   In late 2018, the LEGO Foundation made a $100 million grant to Sesame Workshop to bring the power of learning through play to children affected by the Rohingya and Syrian refugee crises.   And, in late 2019, it made another grant to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to bring learning through play to children impacted by crises in Ethiopia and Uganda. The CEO of the IRC is David Miliband and close collaboration with the relevant governments is important.   We also hear how much of the thinking at the LEGO Foundation was triggered by an earlier $100 million grant made by the MacArthur Foundation and how insight from this helped shape their approach.   Is this $100 million grant-making which happened in late 2018 and late 2019, due to become an annual tradition?  John provides the answer and interesting context.   Throughout the conversation, John also sheds light on the LEGO Foundation’s work in Bangladesh, collaborating with BRAC, and its engagement with implementation partners such as Plan International, War Child, Ubongo, BIT (Behavioural Insights Group) and IPA (Innovation for Poverty Action), to name a few.   John's personal narrative is equally fascinating. He provides insight into his career trajectory, from engineering and accounting, to two decades at P&G and, subsequently, to the LEGO Group and the LEGO Foundation. An interesting journey that will inspire others who seek purpose in their lives.   There are two key takeaways John would like to share with listeners:   (1) No individual chooses to be displaced; they don’t choose to be a refugee. Yet, much of the narrative, unfortunately, that surrounds refugees and displaced individuals is one of negativity towards the individuals that are displaced. All of us that work in the aid sector need to ensure that we are – alongside the terrible plight that these individuals often find themselves in – also presenting to the wider society that there is hope and there can be positivity out of this, if society is more receptive to their fellow human beings. So, trying to talk about this situation in a positive light and change the narrative slightly to incorporate the opportunities that are possible if we all look more with a lens of embrace.   (2) There’s a wonderful richness that can come if we are able to break down our silos and embrace the opportunities that present themselves to bring our expertise and knowledge in a collective way, such that we can draw on the strengths of the private sector, we can draw on the strengths of the aid sector, we can draw on the strengths of the philanthropic sector, and we can draw on the strengths of academia. None of us believes that any one silo has the best solution, but that by coming together we can optimise and create something new that will have that systemic impact that ultimately we seek.  John encourages everyone to collaborate in a non-silo way and come at it with the open, curious mind that we advocate and espouse our children to have through learning through play.   Visit Lidji.org for guest bios, episode notes and useful links.  Please subscribe and share if you enjoy this podcast -- thank you!  

With a prolific career spanning academia and industry, Susan’s research focuses on the economics of digitization, marketplace design, and the intersection of econometrics and machine learning. She received her PhD at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and taught at MIT and Harvard before returning to Stanford. She was consulting chief economist for Microsoft for six years and the first woman to receive the John Bates Clark medal for her contribution to economic thought and knowledge. Susan sits on the boards of Expedia, Lending Club, Rover, Turo, and Ripple, as well as the nonprofit Innovations for Poverty Action.Throughout her career, she has built upon an early interest in auctions that she developed as an undergraduate at Duke, where she triple majored in computer science, economics and mathematics. Susan first applied her expertise to develop a market-based system for timber auctions in British Columbia that enabled a more efficient allocation of resources that was not subject to trade disputes. The system she developed in the early 2000s is still used today to price almost all of the timber in British Columbia.While at Harvard, she was working on auction models for search advertising when she got a call from Microsoft. Steve Ballmer asked if she could come help them develop their new search engine. She had accomplished many of her academic goals: earning tenure at MIT, teaching at Stanford and Harvard and receiving this Clark medal. “I realized that this could be a good moment in my life to take a risk,” she said.“Being a part of the birth of a search engine, and particularly the search-advertising platform was I think just a transformative experience for my life,” she said. While the Bing search engine was ultimately not able to compete with Google, Microsoft’s investment in the research yielded expertise in machine learning and cloud computing, which is now the company’s most important business.Susan consulted with Microsoft for six years but knew she wanted to continue to pursue her career in academia. After stints at Harvard and MIT, she decided to return to Stanford as she saw it was the best place to collaborate with industry to do cutting-edge research.As Associate Director at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), she brings a social science perspective to AI questions. She explains how in online advertising, you need to understand the system and the economic incentives of the people operating in the system. An engineering perspective sees a database full of advertiser bids that feels static. An economist’s perspective sees those bids as strategic. If you understand the behavior of those firms, and their objectives, you can predict their responses to a change in the system. “It's so important to bring in multiple perspectives. There have been many cases where people have made big mistakes because they only look at it from one particular perspective.”The effectiveness of an application is not determined by the details of the algorithm, what’s really important is that you’re optimizing the right long-term objective. The success of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence in applications is critically dependent on having domain experts and social scientists that think about long-term objectives and how to measure them.Currently, Susan believes there are opportunities to use technology to tackle inequality problems. She sees potential in using mobile devices throughout the world for education, training, and nudges to guide decision-making. She started the Shared Prosperity and Innovation Initiative at the business school to help social impact firms integrate more AI into their products and services.Another technology that she thinks can help address inequality is Bitcoin. “I think I was the first economist to take Bitcoin seriously. It's fascinating from a variety of angles.” She learned how many people in the world are disadvantaged by an archaic financial system that is operated for the benefit of large businesses and banks in large countries. “If we can move money the way that we can move information, we could actually make a lot of people's lives better off,” she says.She was used to being the only woman in computer science and economics but a lack of role models made it difficult for her to visualize herself succeeding. She felt the need to overachieve to compensate. “It's very stressful to overachieve,” she said. “But I think it translated into more accomplishments because I just didn't think that I had any wiggle room.”Gender was not as much of an issue for her in business because she came in as a defined expert and was not threatening anybody's job. However, in academia she says the power balance is unclear, and there are no rules about who gets to choose. “Being a powerful woman actually is hard. People seem to like their women a little less threatening than I am,” she says. “When I advise women, I suggest having a clear expertise where everybody understands why you're the one who's talking.”RELATED LINKSConnect with Susan Athey on Twitter (@Susan_Athey) and LinkedInFind out more about Susan on her Stanford GSB ProfileRead more about Stanford Graduate School of BusinessConnect with Margot Gerritsen on Twitter (@margootjeg) and LinkedInFind out more about Margot on her Stanford ProfileFind out more about Margot on her personal website

Students, and faculty, generally have good intentions when planning to work toward long-run objectives. It’s always easier, though, to start those projects tomorrow instead of today. In this episode, Dr. Dean Karlan joins us to discuss how commitment devices may be used to align our short-term incentives with our long-run goals. Dean is a Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University, Co-Director of the Global Poverty Research Lab at the Kellogg School of Management, President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action, co-founder of Stickk.com and Impact Matters, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dean is the author of many scholarly articles and several books related to economics, including my favorite introductory economics textbook. A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.    

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Chris Blattman is the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute and Harris Public Policy. He is an economist and political scientist who studies poverty, violence and crime in developing countries. Chris has designed and evaluated strategies for tackling poverty, including cash transfers to the poorest. Much of his work is with the victims and perpetrators of crime and violence, testing the link between poverty and violence. His recent work looks at other sources of and solutions to violence. These solutions range from behavioral therapy to social norm change and local-level state building. He has worked mainly in Colombia, Liberia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Chicago’s South Side. Dr. Blattman was previously a faculty member at Columbia and Yale Universities, and holds a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley and a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School. He chairs the Peace & Recovery sector at Innovations for Poverty Action and the Crime, Violence and Conflict initiative at MIT’s Poverty Action Lab. Check out the show notes page for all the links, books and resources mentioned in this episode over at www.economicrockstar.com/chrisblattman Support the podcast for as little as $1 per month over at Patreon: www.patreon.com/economicrockstar  

Max Seunik is a degree candidate at Tsinghua Univeristy in Beijing as one of 110 of the inaugural cohort of Schwarzman Scholars, a fully funded graduate program focused on leadership & China (3% acceptance rate). Most recently he led two national field studies in Uganda aimed at evaluating development interventions with Innovations for Poverty Action, a global non-profit that discovers effective solutions to global poverty problems. He serves as Deputy Executive Director of Young Diplomats of Canada, a national non-partisan, non-profit organization that connects young leaders with global summits of the G20, World Bank & IMF, and UN. Max is also a Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum. Previously, Max has advised and worked alongside the Minister of Health of Rwanda to manage a 5-country global health innovation research team, design health evaluation curriculum for a Rwandan university, and spearhead a new digital communications strategy. In civil society, Max works with CIVICUS -- the world alliance for citizen participation -- to redefine civic engagement for youth, including through liaising with partners from Europe to Southeast Asia. Max has presented original research at the United Nations, written for The Globe and Mail, and spoken at conferences around the world, including at TEDxGillings and in Indonesia, Turkey, Colombia, the United States and Canada. He studied public health and Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Public Health as a Morehead-Cain Scholar.

Organizations around the world spend billions of dollars each year trying to lift people out of poverty. Despite the best of intentions, many of these efforts fail, and many others achieve less than optimal results. But some organizations have successfully designed, funded, implemented, and scaled impressive anti-poverty interventions. In this panel, SSIR’s Eric Nee talks to leading experts from three. Asif Saleh, senior director of strategy, communications, and empowerment at BRAC, talks about what the world’s largest NGO has learned about scaling up programs. Yale economist Dean Karlan outlines lessons that Innovations for Poverty Action, the nonprofit research and policy organization he founded, has drawn from more than a decade of evaluating poverty programs around the world. And Kevin Starr talks about the evidence-based approach that the Mulago Foundation, where he is managing director, uses to find and fund poverty-fighting organizations.       https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/what_have_we_learned_about_fighting_poverty

So often these days we hear about the need for real time monitoring, fail fast, quick results and projects that make an immediate difference in the lives of those we are serving. While these are often excellent goals to have, the cost, complications and ability to implement and simply deliver on these demands can be overwhelming to the average development worker or aid provider. At the same time, our community has often acknowledged the need for a deeper, more rigorous approach to understanding how the programming we implement ultimately creates short and medium term outcomes, and ultimately produces longer term results. This is where the work of Annie Duflo and the people of Innovations for Poverty Action excel and I'm happy to have her on the show for our 105th episode. As the Executive Director of IPA, Annie is responsible for leading the organization to implement its strategic plan and day to day operations. Previously, Annie served as IPA's Research Director where she managed its research network, staff capacity-building, and new project development. She also played a key role in the scaling up of successful programs with particular focus on education. Annie has a wealth of experience implementing and managing randomized evaluations in the field. Prior to joining IPA, Annie was the Executive Director of the Centre for Microfinance (CMF) at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) in Chennai, India, which she joined at its creation.

Addressing the nation’s — and the world’s — biggest challenges will require learning and doing what works. A powerful tool for doing that is the randomized evaluation, also known as a randomized control trial (RCT). It is a tool that is increasingly being used in the U.S. and around the world. Well-designed and well-implemented RCTs can […] The post Using randomized evaluations to address global poverty and other social policy challenges: An interview with Dean Karlan, Professor, Yale University, and President, Innovations for Poverty Action – Episode #112 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.