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June 2016   Making Evidence matter
New funding opportunities
Agricultural Insurance Thematic Window
3ie is inviting proposals under its new thematic window, Agricultural insurance: assessing the impact of programmes targeted at smallholder farmers. The window will specifically focus on generating policy-relevant evidence on innovative products and processes that create effective demand for agricultural insurance. The deadline for submitting proposals is 23:59 GMT, 17 July 2016.For more information, click here.

Agricultural Innovation Thematic Window
3ie, on behalf of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), is requesting qualifications for study teams that will use preparation grants prepare proposals for rigorous impact evaluations of AGRA’s Financial Inclusion for Smallholder Farmers in Africa Project in Ghana and Kenya. The deadline for submitting applications is 13 July 2016..For more information, click here.
Bursaries: 3ie is offering a limited number of bursaries to participants to attend an impact evaluation workshop on population, health and nutrition programmes organised by the Center for Evaluation Research and Surveys in Cuernavaca, Mexico 5-6 September. Participants who have been accepted for the workshop will be eligible. No separate application is required. The deadline for applications for the workshop is 31 July 2016.
Grant award updates
Humanitarian Assistance Thematic Window (TW6) 3ie is funding Rebuild Hope for Africa to conduct an impact evaluation of a humanitarian response and resilience rebuilding programme implemented by Mercy Corps in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The study will compare how broad outcomes, including health, income and quality of life of a community are affected by no aid versus standard aid versus the community-driven emergency response approach of Mercy Corps, both after shocks and one year after the end of a three-year development period.

Uganda Country Policy Window Findings from process evaluations supported by will be presented at a workshop organised by the Office of the Prime Minister as part of a high-level meeting in Kampala from 13-17 June. The workshop will also focus on introducing Ugandan policymakers to impact evaluation approaches, tools and best practices in order to build appreciation for the four evidence-informed policymaking and how impact evaluations can contribute to generating robust, policy relevant evidence.

Nepal Policy Initiative A proposal preparation grant has been offered to the University of Minnesota for evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention within the School Sector Reform Plan in Nepal. The team will submit the impact evaluation proposal by 31 June.
New associate members
Palm Associates Limited, Zambia and Economic Development Initiatives Limited, UK
Evidence uptake and use from 3ie-funded studies
Strengthening the impact of a community-based cash transfer programme in Tanzania: In 2010, the Government of Tanzania launched a pilot of a community-based conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme that aims to increase investments in health for young children and the elderly and increase investments in education for children aged 7-15 years. This CCT programme supported by the World Bank had a built-in impact evaluation to test its effectiveness and assess the viability of a community-based model. The implementing agency, Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF), is scaling up the pilot CCT programme and using the findings from the impact evaluation to inform its design and implementation. The findings from the study have informed the targeting and enrolment criteria, the benefit structure for households and the health and education conditionality. During the course of the evaluation, the research team received a lot of support from the former and current executive director of TASAF and the head of the management unit of TASAF. They worked closely with the implementing agency on the endline and also on the questions to be added to the survey. This process helps the implementing agency understand the earlier results better and use the results from the endline to inform the scale-up of the programme. As a result of several lessons learnt during the impact evaluation in the pilot phase, TASAF has embedded a large-scale impact evaluation in the scale-up phase too, taking advantage of the staggered roll-out of the programme.
3ie at events
Delhi seminar
Stakeholders in experiments: rewards and risks, 27 April Heather Lanthorn from IDinsight gave a talk, Stakeholders in experiments: rewards and risks, which focussed on the experience of implementing the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria (AMFm) in Ghana. Heather’s talk tried to answer an important question that arises out of such experiments -- why do a variety of stakeholders hesitate to participate in large-scale experimental pilots seeking to provide affordable medicines for potentially deadly and resource-intensive diseases. Watch video
Big numbers about small children: estimating the economic benefits of addressing undernutrition, 10 May Harold Alderman from IFPRI provided a short critique of some of the approaches used to estimate the benefits of investments in child nutrition. The talk discussed several approaches used to estimate the economic benefits of reducing undernutrition and the costs of investing in such programmes on a global scale. Despite being based on evidence from well-designed efficacy trials, Alderman pointed out how most of these studies require a number of assumptions to project the impact of such trials to larger populations and to translate the value of the expected improvement in nutritional status into economic terms. Watch video

3ie-IFPRI seminar
Fairtrade labelling and child labour in the birthplace of Arabica coffee in Ethiopia, 12 May: In 3ie Washington’s monthly seminar, Carleton University professor Jose Galdo presented findings from a study he co-authored on child labour in Ethiopia. Galdo’s research examines how reporting child labour practices differs when surveys are conducted withchildren versus proxy respondents (parents). The Center for Global Development’s Kimberly Elliott, the invited discussant, pointed out that the research does not actually say anything about the impact of Fairtrade on child labour practices as all of the respondent households covered were members of Fairtrade cooperatives. Others in the audience also questioned the policy implications of the study. Some pointed out the potential biases associated with directly surveying children about labour practices.

Please click here to know more about 3ie-sponsored seminars, conferences and other events.
New 3ie publications
Systematic review 28: Doocy, S and Tappis, H, 2016, Cash-based approaches in humanitarian emergencies: a systematic review, 3ie Systematic Review Report 28. London: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie). The findings from this systematic review suggest that cash-based approaches can be effective means of increasing household food security among conflict-affected populations and maintaining household food security among food insecure and drought-affected populations. DFID has since also published a policy response to this systematic review. To access the full review and the policy response, click here.
3ie-funded research in peer-reviewed publications
Cilliers, J, Dube, O, Siddiqi, B, 2016. Reconciling after civil conflict increases social capital but decreases individual well-being. Science, 352(6287), pp.787-794

Zhou Q, Liu CF, Zhang LX, Zhou H and Chen YD, 2015. Research progress in soil-transmitted helminth infection control among children at home and abroad, Chinese Journal of Schistosomiasis Control, 27(4), pp.431-435

Kyegombea, N, Abramskya, T, Devriesa, KM, Michaub, L, Nakutib, J, Starmanna, E, Musuyac, T, Heisea, L and Wattsa, C, 2015. What is the potential for interventions designed to prevent violence against women to reduce children's exposure to violence? Findings from the SASA! study, Kampala, Uganda, Child Abuse & Neglect, 50, pp.128-140

Kurth, AE, Cleland, CM, Chhun, N, Sidle, JE, Were, E, Naanyu, V, Emonyi, W, Macharia, SM, Sang, E and Siika, AM, 2016. Accuracy and Acceptability of Oral Fluid HIV Self-Testing in a General Adult Population in Kenya, AIDS and Behavior, 20(4), pp.870-879

3ie in peer-reviewed publications
The paper, Sustainability: Map the evidence refers to 3ie’s knowledge product - evidence gap maps. McKinnon, MC, Cheng, SH, Garside, R, Masuda, YJ and Miller, DC, 2015. Sustainability: Map the evidence, Nature, 528(7581), pp.185-187

The paper, An approach for setting evidence-based and stakeholder-informed research priorities in low- and middle-income countries lists the 3ie database as a data source for their search strategy. Rehfuess, EA, Durão, S, Kyamanywa, P, Meerpohl, JJ, Younge T and Rohwere A on behalf of the CEBHA+ consortium, 2016. An approach for setting evidence-based and stakeholder-informed research priorities in low- and middle-income countries, Bull World Health Organ; 94(4), pp.297-305
3ie is co-organising the What Works Global Summit in September

The What Works Global Summit (WWGS), 26-28 September 2016 in London, which 3ie is co-sponsoring, will share experiences from around the world and across sectors on measuring policy impact, experiences in the use of evidence, promoting policy uptake, knowledge translation, and critical appraisal of evidence, as well as discussions of new evidence and study methods. Pre-conference capacity building workshops are being organised 24-25 September. Deadline for bursary applications for WWGS is 22 June 2016 For more details, click here
Useful resources
New on 3ie website: 3ie member profiles This new website feature showcases the important work our members are doing and how they are interacting with 3ie. Check out our new member profiles here  
3ie in the news
New blog posts
Seizing the Istanbul moment: rooting for evidence at the World Humanitarian Summit In this post in Evidence Matters, Jyotsna Puri argues for the need for rigorous evidence across the humanitarian sector and throws light on the relative absence of high-quality evidence. She charts a clear action plan for improving the collection and quality of data and evidence on humanitarian assistance. Read the blog here.

Visit the blog, Evidence Matters to view all of our posts.
 

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3ie is an international grant-making NGO promoting evidence-informed development policies and programmes. We are the global leader in funding and producing high-quality evidence of what works, how, why and at what cost. We believe that better and policy-relevant evidence will make development more effective and improve people’s lives.
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