Who are the policymakers and how do they use research evidence? James Georgalakis, Director of the ESRC-DFID Impact Initiative, explores this question and highlights a recent initiative activity in which a range of senior development professionals, working in global organisations, were interviewed by ESRC-DFID grant holders in order to find out more about evidence use behaviours amongst those working to reduce global child poverty and inequality.
Research funded by the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation brings to the fore vital evidence for governments and civil society to use to inform future plans and processes in strengthening health systems, understanding the complex power dynamics that prevent people from accessing healthcare and tackling inequity of access.
Over the course of three days, 150 researchers, practitioners and policy makers at the conference ‘Putting Children First: identifying solutions and taking action to tackle poverty and inequality in Africa’ discussed the available evidence on child poverty and its policy responses, as well as knowledge and policy gaps. Various take-away messages stood out.
Anne Geniets and Niall Winters discuss the Mobile Community Health Worker project (mCHW) Kenya. This is a mobile learning intervention to train community health workers and their supervisors in the assessment of developmental milestones of children under five in two marginalised communities in Kenya.
Ten new grants through the third round of the ESRC-DFID Raising Learning Outcomes programme have been announced.
Following on from the Putting Children First conference, Christian Oldiges, OPHI, Oxford University, explains how governments can apply the Alkire-Foster (AF) method - a flexible technique for measuring poverty - to identify multidimensionally poor children and compute Child Multidimensional Poverty Indices (C-MPIs) that can be used to guide public policies.
Dr Agnes Akosua Aidoo provided the keynote address during the opening session of the conference ‘Putting Children First’ on 23 October 2017. During her inspirational speech, she reminded all participants of the urgency to fight child poverty in Africa, both for improving current and future lives.
A report by the cross-party International Development Committee, released yesterday, identifies priorities for the Department for International Development (DFID) to ensure the promise of the education SDG4 is realized.
How is it that some children, despite growing up in the face of adversity, are able to fare well, and even thrive later in life? What helps children 'overcome the odds' even when the odds are stacked against them? Gina Crivello, Senior Research Officer at Young Lives, explores these questions.
In a blog published by Young Lives (2 November 2017), Paul Dornan, shares his reflections on the Putting Children First conference.