Spotlight
15 years of 3ie: Reflecting on our contributions and the work ahead

Occasionally it is important to pause, reflect on where we are, and celebrate what we have achieved. What better occasion to do so than for our 15th anniversary! In her latest blog, our executive director Marie Gaarder shares a few thoughts. Here’s an excerpt:

“While 3ie’s mission has remained focused on the generation and effective use of high-quality evidence to inform decision-making and improve the lives of people living in poverty in low- and middle-income countries, we're continuously updating the ways we do our work. Now we focus on recognizing where the gaps are, identifying the binding constraints to fulfil our mission, and pushing the frontiers of impact evaluation methods, always while working with our partners and the wider community. Over the years, 3ie has remained relevant by continuously adapting, learning, and reacting to constraints by innovating. But don’t take our word for it, let’s go to the evidence. Let’s celebrate 15 contributions by 3ie for each of its years of existence.” 
Read the blog
On the occasion of 3ie’s 15th anniversary, evidence leaders, operational experts, decision-makers and researchers will come together to reflect on and share ways to address institutional and structural barriers to evidence use. The aim of this panel discussion is to promote learning and strengthen the use of evidence in development institutions. We are co-organizing this event with our long-standing partners at the Center for Global Development (CGD).

Chairs
Amanda Glassman
Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development
Marie Gaarder
Executive Director, 3ie
Panellists
Arianna Legovini
Director of the Development Impact Evaluation (DIME), Development Economics
Håvard Mokleiv Nygård
 Director of Knowledge, Norad
Santiago Levy
Non-resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
 Sekhar Bonu
Former Director General, Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office, NITI Aayog
Register here for the event
Featured
Women’s Day round-up
 
Women weavers complete coursework, including traveling workshops, exposure visits, practical exercises and assignments as part of Chitrika Foundation’s Handmade MBA program








Women weavers complete coursework, including traveling workshops, exposure visits, practical exercises and assignments as part of Chitrika Foundation’s Handmade MBA program

The halfway-point in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals has been a much-needed reminder of how much more distance we must cover to achieve parity among genders in relation to resources, opportunities, agency, and achievements. At the same time, there is a lot to recognize, celebrate and take inspiration from. On International Women’s Day (8 March), we highlighted stories from our projects focused on women and their journeys.  
  • Forty-five women weavers completed coursework as part of the “Handmade MBA,” a techno-managerial course conducted by our partners Chitrika Foundation in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. We spoke to the recent graduates about the multiple challenges they overcame to be able to learn how they can manage their enterprises and how they plan to use their new skills and technical expertise.
  • We recommend reading some of our recent publications focusing on the barriers and facilitators in sanitation-linked livelihoods programs to empower women in several states of India. In India, we are also supporting interventions using different approaches towards women’s collective enterprises through our Swashakt program. Additionally, we continue to generate evidence on the impacts of the government’s largescale National Rural Livelihoods Project, especially in relation to women’s socio-economic status and the social norms that shape rural lives. Read about it here.
  • As part of consolidating evidence from six evidence gap maps commissioned by USAID’s Center for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance, we recently published this brief in which we share lessons on women’s political empowerment.
  • By leveraging and extending the use of our living food systems and nutrition evidence gap map, we produced a rapid evidence assessment on the impact evaluations of women’s empowerment interventions included in the map.
At 3ie, one of our key priorities remains to find evidence-informed ways to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Know more about our work on gender and women’s empowerment here>>
Featured
Mapping and strengthening evidence base on democracy, human rights and governance
 
We recently developed evidence gap maps for each work area of the USAID’s Center for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) – namely, rule of law, human rights, civil society, independent media, good governance and political competition. Here’s a few reasons why you should consider reading them:
  • Large and varied evidence base: The six EGMs identified 1,868 unique studies (1,623 IEs, 63 qualitative studies aiming to establish causal attribution, and 182 SRs) which form the evidence base of the DRG sector. Explore the maps and read the summaries using the links below.
  • Analysis across maps: We also compared the differences, and the similarities across all six maps to inform those involved in identifying areas for future research and those who design programs
  • Thematic analysis: We also produced two thematic analysis briefs, on women’s political empowerment, digital technology for democracy.
  • Practitioner-focused briefs: We drew on select studies we found in different work areas and summarized the key findings to make it easier for practitioners to understand the evidence base and gaps. See the full list below.
  • Interactive user guide: To help first-time users navigate our maps and the complementary analysis, we developed a user guide. Learn more about our work on this project with the DRG Center and NORC at the University of Chicago by visiting our website. View the complete list of related research and knowledge products below.
Rule of Law: Map | Summary | Briefs (systems, society, services)
Human Rights: Map | Summary | Briefs (combatting trafficking in persons, social behaviour change communication)
Civil Society: Map | Summary | Briefs (civic monitoring, decision-making, closed civic spaces)
Independent Media:  Map | Summary | Brief (dissemination of information)
Governance: Map | Summary | Brief (tax reforms)
Political competition: Map | Summary | Brief (voter inclusion)
 
Events
Upcoming events

Evidence 2023 | Coming together to build a knowledge base for evidence-informed decision-making practice
The Africa Evidence Network (AEN) is hosting Evidence 2023 from 13 to 15 September 2023 in Entebbe, Uganda. The event will bring together the Pan-African community for learning, sharing, and relationship-building; provide an opportunity for connection and collaboration to enhance mutual learning and the development of new ideas about supporting evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM); build content for EIDM practice and provide opportunities to share EIDM practice experiences of different experts in the community. For concept note and other information, click here>>


Past event

Building Impactful and Inclusive M&E Organizations

The recently-organised conference by Arthan included a discussion on M&E ecosystem and building inclusive research organisations. 3ie's Monica Jain joined experts from ICRW, Pratham to share insights. The conference brought together key stakeholders from the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) ecosystem to deepen insights and formulate recommendations around the key areas of inquiry, i.e., prominent practices in the sector, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), capacity building and talent management needs within the M&E ecosystem. This thread on Twitter captures thoughts of the experts.

 
Transparent, Reproducible and Ethical Evidence (TREE)
At 3ie, we are refining the process to help research teams consider the ethics questions raised in social science research and document their decisions. Our Transparent, Reproducible, and Ethical Evidence (TREE) Review Framework complements the necessary work of Institutional Review Board (IRBs). We have updated our ethics review system to respond to changing needs of the 21st century and continue to foster scientific integrity.

Our work to pilot test and implement this process has been underway since December 2021 with 15 study team members working on evaluations in four countries across three continents. Read the latest blog to know the initial lessons from across these TREE Reviews.
Explore our TREE Review Framework Tool
 
For the upcoming special issue of the Journal of Development Effectiveness that will focus on ‘Trends in Research Transparency, Reproducibility, and Ethics for Development Effectiveness’, we have extended the deadline to 23 April 2023.

Read more about the criteria and submit your paper.
 
Jobs
Join our growing and dynamic team by applying for one of these unique and impactful roles.