Am I mansplaining? Handy guide from Kim Goodwin Tips from DFID’s Chief Economist on how researchers can influence policy (podcast) New Oxfam study of Pakistan’s World Bank Public Private Partnership (PPP) programme in education comes to pretty damning conclusions on exclusion, cherry picking best students, poor quality teaching and low teacher wages. Analysis of four leading gender and politics journals found

Pedants’ Revolt. ht Jo Edge How to do advocacy on/with the IMF.  Really useful (and short – 8 pages) guide from Eurodad “Church and traditional leaders are your best allies to carry public health messages that require communities to change age-old habits and challenge their traditions.” Congo’s Health Minister reflects on the lessons of his country’s wonderful Ebola success. My

I wish I was one of those people who can sit zen-like through a two day conference, smiling and constructive throughout. Instead I fear I come across as slightly unhinged – fidgety; big mood swings as I get excited, irritated or bored in rapid succession. The most recent example of my failings was a two day discussion at IDS last

Alex Douglas from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue adds some useful insights for adaptive management/TWP from his vantage point in peace building Wily aid practitioners have long understood the importance of adapting their programs to the political environment, and even use their activities to push politics in a progressive direction.  But this magic was spun secretly, hidden behind logframes and

I’m topping and tailing today’s post with the African origins of France’s World Cup winning football team. Ht Winnie  Byanyima for this infographic This is an enchanting and uplifting 45 secs. Anyone know which country these kids are in? Special props to the ‘little hype man’. New ”Practical Guide to Measuring Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment in Impact Evaluations” from the

The OECD’s ‘States of Fragility’ report was published yesterday. It’s a 260 page monster, so I haven’t got round even to skimming it yet. Will report back on the interesting bits, but in the meantime here is the piece I contributed, on fragility and aid. If aid is primarily aimed at reducing extreme poverty and suffering, then its future lies

The Trump demo last Friday v my first experiences in the early 80s: you still can’t hear the speakers, and everyone still mills around trying to find their friends. But at least there’s more music now and the outfits and placards have got a lot more fun. Here are a few of my favourites (the one on the left needs

The discussion on Community Driven Development (CDD) has been passionate, at times angry, and has surfaced some important common ground as well as differences. Here Scott Guggenheim responds to yesterday’s post, in what he hopes is the final exchange (people can always continue in the comments section). To recap for those who are arriving new to this, we’ve had 4 posts,

Not sure if you can take any more posts on Adaptive Management, but I had an interesting conversation with Stephen Gray on AM and Peacebuilding, which he may be using for a podcast. A few lightbulb moments: Things we often assume go together, but they actually don’t. Two candidates: Results v Risk: There is a vague sense that those evil

Authors, always check your publisher’s cover design….. Oxfam is doing some innovative, nuts and bolts work on gender and development: Measuring the impact of a gender rights project on women’s empowerment in Indonesia. V cool bit of evaluation using quasi-experimental research design How to construct a women’s empowerment indicator for a given project/community based on women’s own weighting of different

Tim Gore explains the evolving theory of change behind Oxfam’s new supermarkets campaign ‘First the brands, now the retailers.‘ That was the reaction of a senior staffer at Mars – one of the 10 biggest global food manufacturers targeted in our award-winning Behind the Brands campaign – to the Behind the Barcodes launch last month. Why did we choose supermarkets

Scott Guggenheim, one of the better known names in Community Driven Development (CDD), comes out with a take-no-prisoners critique of the critique of CDD by 3ie (apologies for acronym overload), featured in my recent post. It’s long, but I just couldn’t find places to cut it. Duncan obviously thrives on controversy, so he’s asked me to adapt my comment on