CLEAR Week: Maurya West Meiers on “Go-to” sources of information on evidence topics in the international development sphere

I’m Maurya West Meiers, Senior Evaluation Officer at the World Bank, and also a member of the Global Hub team for the CLEAR program (Centers for Learning on Evaluation and Results). Since I work in the international development sphere on M&E capacity building, I try to follow news, resources and events related to these topics. I gain a lot of great information from the sources below, which I hope are useful to you.

  • The Center for Global Development positions itself as a “think and do” tank, where independent research is channeled into practical policy proposals, with great events and the occasional heated debate.
  • DevEx is a media platform ‘connecting and informing’ the global development community and is known as a key source for development news, jobs and funding opportunities.
  • GatesNotes is Bill Gates’ blog on what he is learning and it touches on a variety of international topics related to evidence – plus many other matters that have nothing to do with these topics but are simply interesting.
  • For impact evaluation there are a number of sources including 3ie, which is an international grant-making NGO that funds impact evaluations and systematic reviews. JPAL (Poverty Action Lab) is a network of affiliated professors from global universities. Both 3ie and JPAL provide heaps of impact evaluation resources – research, webinars, funding opportunities and so on.
  • The Behavioural Insights Team is a government institution dedicated to the application of behavioral sciences and is also known as the UK Nudge Unit. This is a good site to visit for research and events on this trendy subject matter.
  • OpenGovHub is a network of 35+ organizations promoting transparency, accountability, and civic engagement around the world. The OpenGovHub newsletter consolidates and shares updates on the work and events from these organizations. For even more resources, be sure to look through the list of OpenGovHub’s network members in Washington and other locations.
  • Many readers of AEA365 will be familiar with these well-known groups in our community: BetterEvaluation (a platform for sharing information to improve evaluation), EvalPartners (a global movement to strengthen national evaluation capacities) and, of course, CLEAR (a global team aimed at improving policy through strengthening M&E systems and capacities).

Hot Tip:

  • If you sign up for newsletters from these groups, create an email account to manage your news feeds and avoid cluttering your work or personal email accounts.

The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Centers for Learning on Evaluation and Results (CLEAR) week. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from members of CLEAR. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

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