The Impact Initiative

Our mission is to increase the uptake and impact of research from two major research programmes jointly funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Department for International Development (DFID): the Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research and the Raising Learning Outcomes in Education Systems Research Programme. [read more]

Picture (cropped): Jessica Lea/DFID/Flickr  licensed under CC-BY-2.0

News and Views

Event: Panel at CIES 2019: The role of evidence in advancing policy to raise learning outcomes equitably for sustainable development

How can evidence influence policy to raise equitable learning outcomes? Are there ways in which researchers can boost opportunities for the uptake of their evidence? Join the discussion at this CIES 2019 side event.

Event: Everyday lives and environmental change

News: SDGs and global education lecture, April 25

Blog: Disrupting the seating plan at the UN

News: Migrants provide solutions to urban sustainability

News: Researchers and youth shaping policy in Ethiopia

Blog: Barriers to education for disabled youth

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The Impact Lab

The Impact Lab seeks to strengthen links and create dialogue by providing an outline of the issues and clear lessons for knowledge practitioners, donors and researchers. The first outputs are an edited collection of articles and a series of Learning Guides which draw on the lessons for successful impact in areas previously identified as potential barriers to impact. Find out more or see our glossary of terms.

Calling ESRC DFID Grant Holders

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Discover how to maximise the impact of your project

Edited collection of articles

The social realities of knowledge for development

Analysis of the critical challenges faced by organisations and individuals involved in evidence-informed development through a diverse set of case studies and think pieces

Impact stories

Communities Improve Water Management in Burkina Faso

Setting up 'Innovation Platforms' in Burkina Faso around water reservoirs has led diverse members of rural communities to manage their most precious resource in harmony.

Marginalised Youth Informing Policy and Practice in Ethiopia and Nepal

Explores how marginalised youth in Ethiopia and Nepal, and in contexts of environmental fragility and political change, can get their voices heard in policy and practice.
Image shows a person stoking the fires of a kiln at night

The Climate Change-Modern Slavery Nexus in Cambodia

Focuses on Cambodian brick kilns to examine how a high vulnerability to climate change can facilitate trafficking into new industries and greater susceptibility to modern slavery.

See more at the Impact Lab

Featured Projects

Urban/Rural

Energy transitions among marginal populations

Examining the energy practices of very poor women, men and young people living in informal settlements in peri-urban situations in Nigeria, South Sudan, Nepal and Bangladesh and how these are changing, drawing comparative lessons.

Education

Sustainable education: deaf children and young adults

The exclusion of deaf children and young adults from access to school systems results in individuals and communities being denied quality education, leading to unemployment, low income, and increasing poverty.

Health

A behavioural economic analysis of reproductive health

Focusing on the low or inadequate uptake of reproductive health services in sub-Saharan Africa, which directly influences the health and survival prospects of women and their children, as well as their economic participation and poverty.

Governance

Impact of social pensions on multiple dimensions of poverty

This research seeks to generate robust, urgently needed evidence to address the critical knowledge gaps in order to inform policy debates and thinking on the further development of the Older Persons Cash Transfer Programme in Kenya.

Resources

Research for policy and practice

Women, work, social protection

Explores the need for a holistic approach to social protection moving beyond a framing of poverty alleviation as primarily being about access to the traditional labour market and cash transfers to encompass a broader range of considerations.

Research for policy and practice

Urban community resilience

Whilst cities have the potential to be great drivers of improvements in human wellbeing, impoverishment is an unrelenting feature of urban life. Explores urban community resilience from Bangladesh, Cape Verde, Nepal, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Timor-Leste.

Conference papers

Raising Learning Outcomes

This booklet provides an overview of education research encompassing 30 projects focused in 24 countries which have been enabled by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Department for International Development (DFID) Strategic Partnership.

Conference papers

Recipes for impact

This booklet profiles a selection of research funded by the ESRC-DFID Strategic Partnership and the impact they have achieved. These stories highlight the multiple, unique and sometimes surprising paths to achieving impact.


See more Resources