Location: Webinar (Free)
Date: October 6, 2021 Time: 6:30 PM- 8 PM IST/4 PM-5:30 PM EAT/2 PM-4:30 PM WAT/9:00 AM - 10:30 AM EDT
Organizer: Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups
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The development community is increasingly recognizing the need to integrate robust implementation research with impact evaluations to apply their lessons to decisions about scaling up pilot interventions. Research also has demonstrated the implications of program scale-up for implementation quality and program impacts. For example, studies have shown that many successful pilot interventions fail to produce similar impacts when scaled up, owing to multiple reasons. The decision to invest in a program, however, is guided by both program effectiveness as well as the cost of producing those effects, making it imperative to understand the implications of program scale for costs. This webinar will include two studies that demonstrate costs of scaled-up livelihoods and health interventions, delivered through women’s group programming. The session will specifically explore economies of scale and cost-effectiveness of a Self-Help Group program in India, and the scale-up costs and outcomes of a participatory learning and action cycle with women's groups across multiple countries.
Speakers:
Hassan joined the Economics of Global Health and Development group of UCL’s Institute for Global Health in 2012. His primary area of work is in the analysis of inequalities in health and (access and utilisation of) health care, economic evaluation of health care interventions. He also has interests in injury prevention and trauma care. Hassan is currently involved in economic analysis of trials in South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on maternal and child health, child malnutrition and sexual reproductive health.
Mr. Raj Kumar Gope is Team Lead at Ekjut. His work revolves around generation of evidence and research into policy and practices for healthier society with a deep focus on rural under-served communities, including tribal population. He has been a core team member of Team Ekjut in co-creating models in public health that have been recognized both globally (by the likes of UN, WHO, Lancet) and nationally (NHM and multiple State Govts). With over 18 years of rich and diverse experience in the development sector, Mr. Gope is a DASRA - Harvard Business Publishing Social Impact Leadership Fellow (Cohort II). During his 15 years with Ekjut, he has co-authored several papers which have been published in high impact international journals like Lancet, PLOS Medicine, BMC Public Health.
Garima Siwach is a Senior Economic Researcher at the American Institutes for Research where she specializes in research and evaluation of policies and programs specific to employment, education, and international development. She serves as the Project Director of the Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups (ECWG) supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on synthesizing and strengthening research on women’s groups in India and East-Africa. As part of her role in the ECWG, she has authored studies on the costs and cost-effectiveness of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in India, the implications of COVID-19 on SHG activities under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), and the role of women’s groups in providing resilience against COVID-19 in Nigeria. She also serves as the cost-effectiveness lead of the Nigeria for Women Project, and has previously worked as the director of rural initiatives with a microfinance organization in India where she designed livelihoods interventions for rural women and landless households.
Alkesh Wadhwani leads the poverty alleviation portfolio for the foundation’s India Country Office, which comprises programmatic work in Agriculture Development, Water, Sanitation & Hygiene, Financial Services for the Poor (FSP), and Gender Equality. Previously, Alkesh led the health, nutrition, and family planning portfolio for the foundation in India. Alkesh joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in India in 2003 and was one of the key members who helped conceptualize and implement the $338 million funded Avahan program, the AIDS initiative of the world's largest HIV/AIDS prevention programs.
Fred Matovu is a Senior Lecturer of Health economics at the School of Economics, Makerere University with over 15 years of experience and a track record of research in the areas of Cost and cost-effectiveness, impact evaluations, Equity analysis poverty and welfare analysis. He holds a PhD in Economics from University of London. His recent research has focused on Migration and Youth Employment; Saving Schemes and Women Economic empowerment; Social Protection and Household welfare, Economics of Malaria, cost and cost-effectiveness of interventions.
Ms. Jacqueline Naggayi Mukisa
Ms. Jacqueline Naggayi Mukisa is the Monitoring & Evalulation and Knowledge Management manager at PROFIRA, a Government of Uganda initiative to increased income, improve food security and reduce vulnerability in rural areas by focusing on on two rural institutions that have demonstrated that financial services can be provided to even the poorest members of rural communities - Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs) and Community Savings and Credit Groups (CSCGs).
Thomas de Hoop is a Principal Economic Researcher in the International Development Division at American Institutes for Research (AIR). He oversees a research and evaluation portfolio with a focus on the impact, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of self-help groups, savings groups, and education innovations in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. He is currently the co-principal investigator for the Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups (ECWG), a four-year research project that focuses on synthesizing, strengthening, and disseminating research on the impact, and cost-effectiveness of self-help and savings groups. As part of the ECWG, Dr. de Hoop leads or co-leads studies on the impact of COVID-19 on the functioning of women’s groups and how SHGs in India and savings groups in Nigeria and Uganda contribute to mitigating the economic consequences of COVID-19. He is also the principal investigator for a three-year quasi-experimental study on the Nigeria for Women Project.