Social challenges analysis
Understanding social problems and how to address them is sounds straight forward but unfortunately, it’s NOT. We help managers, decision makers and organizations designing development programs in various sectors establish the existing gaps to maximize impact by matching potential theories of change, reviewing existing knowledge, interviewing potential stake holders, collecting data from communities, and identifying key gaps.
Finding & Designing what works
In the real world, the one-size-fits-all and therefore simply replicating what worked in a different environment approach to solving local social solutions is outrageous, We help decision makers design interventions appropriately based on a thorough analysis of the existing challenges accompanied by piloting potential interventions. We then work hand in hand with with implementers to rigorously evaluate these potential solutions to make informed decisions before they are scaled up.
Rigorously evaluate potential solutions
In almost every situation, it is not obvious to know whether the intervention is impactful or not. Our major work is to assist policy influencing organizations, managers and of course clients to rigorously evaluate potential solutions to social needs before they are scaled up. How significant a solution will be determined by the problem itself? For example, inventing a new antacid is obviously less significant than finding a cure for cancer, but both can be evaluated. We design our evaluations in a way that are:
Relevant and Context-specific
We design evaluations to help decision makers design projects while taking in account: for whom, under what contextual circumstances, and whether interventions are scalable in equitable ways.
Demand-shaped
Evaluation questions are developed thorough consultations with relevant communities and mapping their needs with our clients operations.
Rigorous
Our scientific studies may be designed in two ways:
- An experimental design, such as those used in randomized controlled trials, in which people who are similarly situated are randomly assigned to a treatment group (those given the intervention) or a control group (those not provided with the intervention) and the outcomes of the two groups are compared at the end of the study; or
- A quasi-experimental design, in which a control group is not used and instead the group that receives the service or program is compared to a group of people that are as similar as to the participant group as possible, but who did not receive this type of the intervention.
We select evaluation methods to maximize rigor within the operational and implementation constraints of our clients.
Responsive
The essential feature of our approach is a responsiveness to key issues or problems especially those recognized by the local community. We slowly design our evaluations, with continuing adaptation of evaluation goal-setting and data-gathering while the people responsible for the evaluation become acquainted with the program and the evaluation context.