Mary Abdo, Managing Director at the Centre for Evidence and Implementation, joins Alberto Lidji to discuss evidence-based philanthropy

 

The Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI) is a global not-for-profit advisory organisation set up in Australia in 2016 with offices in Singapore, the UK and Australia.  They are a social enterprise subsidiary of Save the Children.  

CEI is a mission-driven organisation dedicated to seeing the best evidence implemented in policy and practice to improve the lives of vulnerable people. They work with a range of clients, including governments, foundations and social sector agencies by supporting them to use evidence well and to implement it well.

In order to help organisations accelerate the use of evidence on what works to improve the lives of vulnerable people, the folks at CEI do three things: (1) they support organisations to make sense of the evidence; (2) they work with them to trial, test and evaluate approaches; and (3) they work in ‘Implementation Science’ — if we think of evidence-based interventions as the ‘what’, then Implementation Science is the ‘how’.

During the conversation, we look at what it actually means to be evidence-informed in one’s philanthropy, both from a perspective of outlook and from a perspective of approach.

What is evidence and why is it important? There is a need to move away from what simply ‘sounds good’ to what is actually based on good science and research.  Moreover, there is a need to embrace a learning mindset — shifting the emphasis from trying to get it right all the time to a focus on learning and sharing what one has learned.  Innovation is also key and, counterintuitive as it may sound, being innovative also means simply doing what works, now.

Research, methodologies and frameworks have changed over the last 20 years and the potential for big data and artificial intelligence (AI) to transform the field in the coming years is tremendous.

This episode is for anyone who is keen to understand research and evidence, how it is implemented to improve the lives of vulnerable people, why it is important and how its insight can be viewed as a public good on a global level.

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