Episodes
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
Just Live It: How to learn from failure in the conservation sector
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
Iain Dickson from Birdlife talks about his project, "Embracing Failures" which is developing a failure taxonomy that helps conservation organizations learn about the underlying causes of failure. What can we do to get better at learning from failure? "Just live it," says Iain. "We think about it as a complex overarching problem, but many of the solutions are simple." One of the key solutions they found was that there's appetite to talk about failure, but it works best when this is a conversation, and not an exercise filling out forms.
Wednesday Jan 29, 2020
Walking the Tightrope: Balancing Participation and Independence in Evaluations
Wednesday Jan 29, 2020
Wednesday Jan 29, 2020
Kylie Hutchinson, independent evaluator and author of three books about evaluation and program planning: Evaluation Failures: 22 Tales of Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned, A Short Primer on Innovative Evaluation Reporting, and Survive and Thrive: Three Steps to Securing Your Program’s Sustainability talks about how to learn from common evaluation failures to improve impact and social justice. Her two tips are learning how to engage stakeholders more effectively and understand context when you're doing an evaluation. Here are three questions to ask yourself before launching an evaluation: 1) What are we trying to learn? 2) What are we going to do about the answers? 3) When do we need to know?
If you want to learn more, you can read a free chapter in the book here, or find some tips on how to find evaluators here: http://evaluationforleaders.org
Thursday Jan 09, 2020
Thursday Jan 09, 2020
Learning to be less dogmatic about answering the most important academic questions, but instead focus on the practical questions that would allow project teams to "innovate and push" around creating sustainable programs for WASH in schools. Matt Freeman from Emory University and Peter Lochery from CARE talk about what they learned trying to create research that moved programs forward, and allowed us to get better at the work--even when it wouldn't contribute to publications in prestigious journals. They talk about 13 years of research partnership in the SWASH+ project--and how lots of smaller, practical studies with rigorous methods were more useful than one big RCT.
Wednesday Dec 04, 2019
9 Things You're Probably Doing Wrong: Lessons from Global Cash Programming
Wednesday Dec 04, 2019
Wednesday Dec 04, 2019
Holly Radice--CARE's Global Cash and Voucher Assistance Advisor--talks about the most common mistakes she sees when people implement cash programming. Some of her tips? Pay attention to GBV, focus on women and engage men, and most of all--don't be afraid of cash! There are lots of resources that can help you get it right.
Wednesday Oct 30, 2019
Design For Everyone, Not for Experts
Wednesday Oct 30, 2019
Wednesday Oct 30, 2019
"You need to design for real people, not for experts." "Be ruthless with what you really need, and what's just nice to have" Isadora Quay from CARE's Gender and Emergencies work discusses CARE's Gender Marker, and all of the attempts it took to get to a tool that would actually work for the organization, not just the experts. It's about building tools that can turn everyone into a gender champion, and not tools that contain everything. The other secret? Design on a napkin!
Wednesday Oct 16, 2019
Square Pegs and Round Holes: Fitting research to community needs
Wednesday Oct 16, 2019
Wednesday Oct 16, 2019
Anne Sprinkel and Dipendra Sharma from CARE's Tipping Point project talk about the challenges in implementing RCTs, and the risk of sacrificing communities' needs to the methodological rigor that researchers demand. "Make sure you have a good reason for doing an RCT," says Sprinkel. Sharma adds, "Start with good programming, then build research around it." They also have some great tips for managing expectations, clear communication, and just how long it takes to do it right (Hint: it's a lot longer than you think).
Thursday Sep 12, 2019
Thursday Sep 12, 2019
Isadora Quay talks about the process of developing CARE's Rapid Gender Analysis, and how embracing imperfection is key to saving lives. When we want everything to be perfect, that often means we delay or prevent sharing any information at all, which can be catastrophic in humanitarian (and development) settings. Making tools useful for a broader range of people, and focusing on practical, tangible suggestions, and analyzing results in plain language for non-experts are some key lessons to take forward. "Act fast, there's a huge need for real information in real time." Isadora argues that failure is inevitable, so we need to learn not to prevent it, but to manage it and learn from them.
Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
Soyez Courageux et Realiste: Le lecons pour la creation des projets qui marche
Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
Yawo Douvon et Barbara Jean Claude de CARE Haiti discute l'importance d'avoir le courage de dire quelque chose ne marche pas. Il faut du courage pour expliquer que les objectives ne sont pas realiste, et que nous risquons de ne pas tout accomplir. Avoir l'analyse du context--meme dans les cas d'urgence--le renforcement des rapports avec les bailleurs, la suivi des indicateurs, et la communcation sont tous les outils qui peuvent vous aider.
Thursday Aug 22, 2019
Be Bold and Realistic: Creating space for project plans that will work
Thursday Aug 22, 2019
Thursday Aug 22, 2019
Yawo Douvon and Barbara Jean-Claude from Haiti talk about the importance of being bold when it comes to admitting that something won't work. It takes courage to point out that goals and expectations are unrealistic, and that we might not get everything done. Getting good context analysis--even in emergencies--building solid donor relationships, carefully monitoring data, and being proactive in communications when something goes off track are all tips that can help you through a rocky project implementation. (French version will be coming the week of August 26th.)
Monday May 20, 2019
The Learning From Failure Report: A Systemic Look at What Goes Wrong
Monday May 20, 2019
Monday May 20, 2019
Katie Pons from CARE talks about a current research effort to learn from what goes wrong based on CARE's evaluations. Using a qualitative analysis program called MAXQDA, Katie and her colleagues have been doing a meta-analysis to give us a more structured way to talk about failure, not just case by case, but in the broader systems sense. Listen to the podcast, and then tell us what reports you would like to see from this data set. Shout out in the comments, or e-mail ejanoch@care.org.
Wednesday Apr 03, 2019
It's All About Backup: When Experimental Systems Go Wrong
Wednesday Apr 03, 2019
Wednesday Apr 03, 2019
In our first ever Francophone episode, Fanomezantsoa Randrianarisoa from CARE Madagascar talks about what happens when you launch an experimental monitoring system before partners are ready for it. Besides challenges getting the data you need, there are serious risks to sustainability. Investing in people's skills, creating back-up plans, and aligning with global systems are some of the solutions.
Dans notre premier épisode francophone, Fanomezantsoa Randrianarisoa du CARE Madagascar explique ce qui se passe si vous lancez un nouveau system d’évaluation avant que l’équipe ne soit prêt. Il n’y a pas seulement les difficultés de trouver l’information, mais aussi les risques pour pérenniser le system. Les leçons appris comprennent : un appui au personnel, l’appropriation du system, et l’harmonisation avec les autres systems.
Wednesday Mar 27, 2019
The Art of Humility: Accepting Reality and Learning From Failure
Wednesday Mar 27, 2019
Wednesday Mar 27, 2019
Ian Lathrop from USAID’s LEARN project talks about how to show the art of humility, and learn from failures so we don’t repeat them. After action reviews, pause and reflect, and having leaders model behavior are all practical actions he suggests for getting better at this. Some of the resources he suggests to create space for learning from failure are USAID Learning Lab - CLA Maturity Tool Resources, the video on Community Connector and CLA: Proving the Concept, and Learning Lab’s failure blog.
Wednesday Oct 24, 2018
Look to Line 238: what happens when reporting impact is optional
Wednesday Oct 24, 2018
Wednesday Oct 24, 2018
Sarah Eckoff from CARE USA's Gender Justice Team talks about why when most of CARE's projects work on gender, 0% of them are reporting against the supplemental gender indicators. User experience with our reporting forms, the complexity of measuring gender, and the way we roll out tools are all a part of the story.
Wednesday Oct 17, 2018
The Missing 600: Impact we can't tell you about
Wednesday Oct 17, 2018
Wednesday Oct 17, 2018
In a two year period, more than 600 CARE projects closed without ever reporting impact data. Sofia Sprechmann, CARE International's Program Director, talks about why we've been failing to report all of our impact, and what we're doing to fix it. Two tools she references are the resources on measuring the impact of advocacy and CARE's unique Impact Map.