Evidence Action Newsletter March 2019

We’ve had an evidence-and-action-filled start to 2019. Over the past three months, we’ve supported mass deworming efforts across four countries – including Pakistan’s first-ever school-based deworming day in Islamabad. Meanwhile, for the 6th year running, with our support the Government of India undertook National Deworming Day on February 8 with a targeted reach of 245 million children!

Our Dispensers for Safe Water program continues to achieve strong program performance, including rising adoption rates, while also exploring creative partnerships to sustain our impact. This includes a recent agreement with The Clorox Company to help supply chlorine – and hence clean water – to 3.4 million people across Kenya and Uganda.

Celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8, we reflected on how gender balance in the workplace truly makes our organization better, with several team members sharing their reflections in this video). Women compose 66% of our global leadership team and 50% of our board – yet another way that Evidence Action is challenging the status quo and translating our values into action!  

Best,

• Winning Start, an education initiative in our Beta Incubator, has completed recruitment of its fifth cohort of youth volunteers in Kenya. The volunteers will be trained to provide tens of thousands of primary school children with evidence-based remedial support designed to improve literacy and numeracy skills. We’ve simultaneously kicked off an impact evaluation of the program, the results of which we expect later this year.
• Later this year, we’ll trial and assess some ways of helping the Government of India improve the cost-effectiveness of their national school-based Weekly Iron and Folic Acid Supplementation program, which aims to reduce anemia among children and adolescents. Learn more in our latest blog post.

• We’re proud to have supported the Government of Pakistan in launching its “Deworm Islamabad Initiative,” to target 570,000 children at risk of intestinal worm infections. Alongside Interactive Research & Development (IRD), we provided technical assistance to the government to conduct its first deworming day under the initiative on January 31.
• For the 6th year running, we’re working with the Government of India to deworm hundreds of millions of children. The first round of deworming for 2019 took place on February 8, targeting ~245 million children.
• Parasites & Vectors published the results from a 5-year impact evaluation of Kenya’s national school-based deworming program, which show a decline in soil-transmitted helminth infections in Kenya from 32.3% in 2012 to 13.5% in 2017!
• Good Ventures, in partnership with the Open Philanthropy Project, is supporting our Deworm the World Initiative with a $10.4 million grant, following GiveWell’s 2018 recommendation of Deworm the World as a top charity.

• We recently signed a three-year partnership with The Clorox Company to supply a portion of the chlorine solution, similar to Clorox’s household bleach, for the Dispensers for Safe Water program in Kenya and Uganda. Through this partnership, The Clorox Company will help Dispensers for Safe Water bring safe drinking water to 3.4 million people every year in Kenya and Uganda.
• Driven by a passion for impact, our team works hard to maintain consistently high usage rates of our chlorine dispensers. Over the course of January and February 2019, our chlorine dispensers were used by 61% of people with access to them. We saw our usage rates in Uganda rise from 70% at the end of 2018 to 79% in January and February this year.
• Good Ventures, in partnership with the Open Philanthropy Project, is supporting our Dispensers for Safe Water program with a $100,000 grant, following GiveWell’s 2018 standout charity recommendation.

Our team proves the effectiveness of chlorine for safe water treatment by using it to treat their own drinking water at Kenya’s World Water Day celebrations. In the Media Our Deworm the World Initiative’s work in Kenya was featured on Future Crunch’s list of “99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2018” (see #29). “Evidence Action on mission to make every child worm-free” in the Deccan Chronicle highlighted our role in expanding deworming coverage to hundreds of millions of children through the Government of India’s National Deworming Day. A teacher administers deworming treatment to students in Islamabad on Pakistan’s inaugural deworming day. PHOTO CREDIT: IRD Looking Ahead Our Deworm the World Initiative is preparing to support deworming efforts in two Nigerian states this June. We’re assessing a range of new, evidence-backed ideas with the potential to cost-effectively improve health and agricultural outcomes for millions of people facing poverty. Look out for updates as we move forward with piloting some of these ideas in 2019.

We’re partnering with the Government of Kenya, through its national volunteering program G-United, to test a volunteer-led model of implementing the proven Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach. Watch below to hear from G-United volunteers about their experience applying this evidence-based pedagogy with children!