1 00:00:05,930 --> 00:00:09,560 It's a great pleasure to have you all here with us today. 2 00:00:09,560 --> 00:00:19,190 I'm Joe Boyd and I'm the recently retired director of Young Lives, and I'm just here really to introduce the event. 3 00:00:19,190 --> 00:00:23,330 The main event really is about the country directors for young lives, 4 00:00:23,330 --> 00:00:34,370 sharing their experiences of governance and impact and the challenges, opportunities and strategies that they've evolved over time. 5 00:00:34,370 --> 00:00:42,290 We're going to start with some short presentations. I will give a little bit of the background of the study, a little bit of its history, 6 00:00:42,290 --> 00:00:51,500 and then they will take over the three country directors will take over, give presentations, will then have a short discussion between the four of us. 7 00:00:51,500 --> 00:00:57,890 I will open to the floor for questions and I want you to feel free to ask anything that's that. 8 00:00:57,890 --> 00:01:02,810 This is a rare opportunity to have three country lectures from three very different countries in the room, 9 00:01:02,810 --> 00:01:13,010 so please feel free to ask any questions that come to mind. So really, just to start by explaining a little bit about what young lives is. 10 00:01:13,010 --> 00:01:20,600 I don't know how many of you are familiar with our work, but the important thing about your lives is it is a longitudinal study. 11 00:01:20,600 --> 00:01:31,070 Its comparative it's in four countries Ethiopia, India, not nationally in India, but in united Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Peru and Vietnam. 12 00:01:31,070 --> 00:01:39,770 It's mixed methods, so we have both qualitative and survey research, and we also have quite a few child measures. 13 00:01:39,770 --> 00:01:45,980 We're at the household child and at school level, so it's quite a complex study. 14 00:01:45,980 --> 00:01:52,520 It was established in 2000 2001 with an initially with a 15 year horizon. 15 00:01:52,520 --> 00:02:01,850 However, we've managed to keep it going longer than that and we have some funding to continue some aspects of it. 16 00:02:01,850 --> 00:02:07,580 There are 12000 children in the study who were recruited initially. 17 00:02:07,580 --> 00:02:14,210 We're interviewing the children and their households, their primary caregivers, and in the qualitative research, 18 00:02:14,210 --> 00:02:23,000 we have a sub sample from those same children who were doing research with both their peers and with other community members as well. 19 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:33,530 And we also have over 30000 children involved in the school effectiveness research, which was introduced a little later in 2010. 20 00:02:33,530 --> 00:02:43,020 And as much as possible, we've tried to recruit into the school effectiveness research children who were also in our household study. 21 00:02:43,020 --> 00:02:47,780 It's a little challenge, doesn't always work, but we've tried to do that as far as possible. 22 00:02:47,780 --> 00:02:57,140 And I just want to say the reason why we introduced the school effectiveness research was because through the first rounds of the study, 23 00:02:57,140 --> 00:03:03,170 we began to realise very quickly just how fundamental education was to these children's lives, 24 00:03:03,170 --> 00:03:07,850 to their sense of aspirations, their hopes for the future, their time, use and so on. 25 00:03:07,850 --> 00:03:11,840 That may seem self-evident, but it wasn't when the study was begun, 26 00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:16,280 because at that point we weren't even sure how many children were attending school. 27 00:03:16,280 --> 00:03:23,540 So this was one of the adaptations, if you like that, we made along the way with the learning that we did with the with the research. 28 00:03:23,540 --> 00:03:27,440 The aim behind young lives always was applied. 29 00:03:27,440 --> 00:03:39,440 It was always about generating evidence, longitudinal evidence to advance understanding of childhood poverty, but also to improve policy and practise. 30 00:03:39,440 --> 00:03:44,270 So engagement with policy and practise has been an objective throughout the study, 31 00:03:44,270 --> 00:03:49,430 and that's both working with national governments and nationally in the study countries, 32 00:03:49,430 --> 00:03:56,510 but also globally with global institutions that support local policy development. 33 00:03:56,510 --> 00:04:01,880 It was set up in effect, is timed with the Millennium Development Goals. 34 00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:10,640 It was really set up to monitor, monitor performance of the development goals and the countries that were chosen were chosen with some 35 00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:16,280 consideration and thought there were something like 24 countries in the original on the original list. 36 00:04:16,280 --> 00:04:23,840 The idea was to have a diversity of countries facing very different challenges at different stages of economic development. 37 00:04:23,840 --> 00:04:29,210 One from each of the major risk regions in developing regions so that you could 38 00:04:29,210 --> 00:04:34,960 really get a sense of of the performance of the MDGs across those different regions. 39 00:04:34,960 --> 00:04:39,950 It now, of course, provides a baseline for the Sustainable Development Goals. 40 00:04:39,950 --> 00:04:46,550 So we've transitioned into a whole new policy era, if you like. 41 00:04:46,550 --> 00:04:55,370 I just want to say a little bit about governance of young lives. It is an extremely large and complex programme of research. 42 00:04:55,370 --> 00:05:01,940 There are 80 sites. Well, I should say there are 80 sites to start with the 80 sites across the four countries. 43 00:05:01,940 --> 00:05:04,820 But of course, as the children migrate, 44 00:05:04,820 --> 00:05:11,990 you create a lot more than 80 sites because we try to track the children as much as possible to everywhere that they migrate to. 45 00:05:11,990 --> 00:05:21,170 We've had five survey rounds, four waves of qualitative research into two waves of the school effectiveness research. 46 00:05:21,170 --> 00:05:29,720 This is a very large volume of data. It's a very large exercise in data gathering and research design and so on. 47 00:05:29,720 --> 00:05:33,440 And there are really five key components to the study. 48 00:05:33,440 --> 00:05:39,290 On the one hand, you've got the data, which is at the heart of the whole thing, which involves data gathering, 49 00:05:39,290 --> 00:05:48,560 the management of of the data gathering processes and the management of the transition of the data towards public archiving. 50 00:05:48,560 --> 00:05:57,350 All the survey data and school effectiveness data are archived publicly and available to anybody for research. 51 00:05:57,350 --> 00:06:07,490 The qualitative data is not publicly archived. Of course, key to all of this are the research outputs and the dissemination of the research. 52 00:06:07,490 --> 00:06:12,800 I haven't kept a tally, but I know that there are over 800 publications. 53 00:06:12,800 --> 00:06:21,950 That's if you like formal publications and that doesn't include all the social media and other outputs that that are generated by the study. 54 00:06:21,950 --> 00:06:28,100 So it's really important for us to have a strong communications component as much as possible. 55 00:06:28,100 --> 00:06:32,240 We have that at both country level and also globally. 56 00:06:32,240 --> 00:06:38,060 And communications management messaging is a quite a challenging thing to do 57 00:06:38,060 --> 00:06:43,670 because the topics that the study covers are very broad everything from health, 58 00:06:43,670 --> 00:06:49,310 nutrition, education, time, use, cognition and all kinds of other topics. 59 00:06:49,310 --> 00:06:56,480 Beside that, most recently, things like Violence, Gender-Based Violence, other forms of violence and exploitation. 60 00:06:56,480 --> 00:06:58,040 So communications, 61 00:06:58,040 --> 00:07:07,820 I've separated out from policy engagement in the study countries and globally because that's where we really interact with the key stakeholders, 62 00:07:07,820 --> 00:07:12,170 the policymakers and the practitioners that we're trying to influence. 63 00:07:12,170 --> 00:07:16,460 We also have a capacity building component, which is really important. 64 00:07:16,460 --> 00:07:25,820 That's not just the capacity of young lives, staff and partners and so on to to to really fulfil to the maximum their roles. 65 00:07:25,820 --> 00:07:35,120 It's also about building the capacity of policymakers and other stakeholders to use evidence in their planning and so on. 66 00:07:35,120 --> 00:07:39,740 It's not always the case that policymakers use evidence in making their decisions, 67 00:07:39,740 --> 00:07:47,780 so it's been very important to us to create that enabling environment a receptive environment for the research messaging. 68 00:07:47,780 --> 00:07:49,370 The study moved to Oxford. 69 00:07:49,370 --> 00:08:01,460 We took the study over in 2005, and key to the staffing in Oxford was the position of the director, programme manager or chief operating officer. 70 00:08:01,460 --> 00:08:07,460 This is an absolutely crucial role, and I always make a big thing about it with research is how important it is to have 71 00:08:07,460 --> 00:08:11,750 programme management skills because of the complexity of the contracts there's. 72 00:08:11,750 --> 00:08:14,030 There's so much going on in this study. 73 00:08:14,030 --> 00:08:22,760 It was always a very central role that we have and research, communications, data and administrative staff as well. 74 00:08:22,760 --> 00:08:33,050 In in Oxford. We are a partnership across these four countries, but we also have partners, partners in the United States and in other universities. 75 00:08:33,050 --> 00:08:44,270 UCL, for example, in the UK. And the partnership approach, I would suggest, is probably one of the most important aspects of our success, I think. 76 00:08:44,270 --> 00:08:48,020 So we don't work with survey companies in any of our context. 77 00:08:48,020 --> 00:08:54,860 We work with long term partners. And indeed, some of the partners in the project have been in this study longer than I have. 78 00:08:54,860 --> 00:08:59,690 So that longevity continuity is fundamental to our work. 79 00:08:59,690 --> 00:09:05,090 We appointed country directors along the way, three of whom are with us. 80 00:09:05,090 --> 00:09:08,960 The country director, unfortunately for Vietnam, wasn't able to join us. 81 00:09:08,960 --> 00:09:13,790 But the important thing is that we did that again because of the learning. 82 00:09:13,790 --> 00:09:21,920 Along the way, we suddenly realised just how fundamental it would be to have that really strong leadership and representation at the country level. 83 00:09:21,920 --> 00:09:25,640 So that was an important transition point for us. 84 00:09:25,640 --> 00:09:27,320 We have multiple donors. 85 00:09:27,320 --> 00:09:36,620 The core funding comes from the Department for International Development, and they have contributed somewhat over 30 million pounds to date. 86 00:09:36,620 --> 00:09:44,690 And we also have many other donors, some of which are quite small, that come with very specific interests and very particular research topics. 87 00:09:44,690 --> 00:09:51,680 Which in itself is quite a management exercise. And I think it's really important to say we've been incredibly lucky. 88 00:09:51,680 --> 00:09:58,700 I'm well aware that many longitudinal studies in the world do not have this long term commitment to the core. 89 00:09:58,700 --> 00:10:03,050 Funding and funding is often the most challenging aspect of their work. 90 00:10:03,050 --> 00:10:10,550 Many of them are forced to raise funds per round, and that's extraordinarily destabilising in the kind of work that we do. 91 00:10:10,550 --> 00:10:16,850 So I just thought that was another important point to make. So I'm now going to handover over. 92 00:10:16,850 --> 00:10:24,380 We're going to start. I'm going to just introduce everybody now, and we're going to run through the presentations one after the other. 93 00:10:24,380 --> 00:10:27,710 And then we'll be having the discussion following the presentations. 94 00:10:27,710 --> 00:10:32,330 The first presentation is going to be given by Professor Santiago Quetzal from Peru. 95 00:10:32,330 --> 00:10:41,690 He's the country director for Peru. Santiago is an educationalist and a psycho nutrition and brings enormous wealth of experience, 96 00:10:41,690 --> 00:10:46,580 both in research and also in policy engagement to the study. 97 00:10:46,580 --> 00:10:55,310 And indeed, he has led on a lot of the the work related around psychometrics and school and education. 98 00:10:55,310 --> 00:10:59,390 We then have Ranasinghe Dr. Ranasinghe following him. 99 00:10:59,390 --> 00:11:10,220 Reno is the country director for India, and Reno is a Montessori teacher and an early childhood education expert. 100 00:11:10,220 --> 00:11:17,810 She's come with a very strong background, not just in research, but also in the world of policy engagement, 101 00:11:17,810 --> 00:11:23,870 and has long interactions with international and local NGOs in India. 102 00:11:23,870 --> 00:11:29,870 And finally, we have a Lula Pankhurst. Lula is the country director for Ethiopia. 103 00:11:29,870 --> 00:11:34,250 He is. He is Ethiopia's foremost ethnographer. 104 00:11:34,250 --> 00:11:38,450 He speaks multiple language Ethiopian languages. 105 00:11:38,450 --> 00:11:42,860 He is an expert in community community change processes. 106 00:11:42,860 --> 00:11:48,860 And he's been holding us to look all the time at the way in which the context in which 107 00:11:48,860 --> 00:11:53,480 these young people are growing up are massively changing and dramatically changing. 108 00:11:53,480 --> 00:11:56,270 What kinds of impact is that having on their lives? 109 00:11:56,270 --> 00:12:16,110 And he's always saying, we need to keep interrogating this area of our work, so it gives me great pleasure to hand over to Santiago. 110 00:12:16,110 --> 00:12:27,690 Thank you, Joe. Nobody introduced Joe, so I should say she's a professor here and anthropologist and has led the project for the past 15 years, 111 00:12:27,690 --> 00:12:37,590 like you heard and has been the leader in in in several ways of that project for which we are all very grateful. 112 00:12:37,590 --> 00:12:49,890 Thank you, Joe. And I've been with young life since a little bit before October started leading this project at around 2004 for round two. 113 00:12:49,890 --> 00:12:56,430 And this is, you know, you can imagine coming from a developing country, 114 00:12:56,430 --> 00:13:06,220 being able to participate in a society that sees children grow in so many ways with two cohorts is a. 115 00:13:06,220 --> 00:13:19,270 A luxury and intellectual stimulation, but also a challenge in the way that Joe was mentioning that we are asked not only to produce papers, 116 00:13:19,270 --> 00:13:26,050 good ones and publish them and so forth, present them at conferences, but also to have an influence in policy. 117 00:13:26,050 --> 00:13:33,130 And that also has changed. I was thinking about is when I was presenting the this presentation. 118 00:13:33,130 --> 00:13:41,020 So for example, in Peru, around the time we started, half of the population or more would be under the poverty line. 119 00:13:41,020 --> 00:13:45,100 And now it's about 20 percent for the past few years. 120 00:13:45,100 --> 00:13:49,900 So monetary, I mean, monetary policy. 121 00:13:49,900 --> 00:13:55,270 But of course, Young Lives is a project that looks at poverty from a mighty, multi-dimensional perspective. 122 00:13:55,270 --> 00:14:02,410 So some of the issues have changed and we have been investigating for the most part over the past few years 123 00:14:02,410 --> 00:14:09,100 issues of inequality as opposed to the issues we were raising at the beginning of the of the project. 124 00:14:09,100 --> 00:14:18,190 So how do we do this in Peru? And these are that well in Peru, we call it Ninos, Nina the millennium for those who speak Spanish. 125 00:14:18,190 --> 00:14:21,300 So this is a free translation, of course, of your lives. 126 00:14:21,300 --> 00:14:32,710 Somebody decided this was a better translation and work in Peru, and we have our own logo and identity and we work. 127 00:14:32,710 --> 00:14:39,880 I work at Garani. You can see here, but also we're working in partnership with Nutritional Research Institute. 128 00:14:39,880 --> 00:14:42,730 And these days, we got supporting. 129 00:14:42,730 --> 00:14:54,100 Aside from that of the effort that Jo was mentioning from the foundational diet that allows us to carry on doing analysis of the data we have. 130 00:14:54,100 --> 00:15:03,890 OK. So how is it that we managed to have an impact or try to have an impact? 131 00:15:03,890 --> 00:15:10,820 Then it's always difficult that perhaps we can go back to this issue at a discussion. 132 00:15:10,820 --> 00:15:19,610 Because sometimes we were asked, how do you demonstrate that we have an impact and an on policy, on other issues and we have some, you know, 133 00:15:19,610 --> 00:15:29,420 quotes and meetings and so forth that I'm going to try to present to you plus others, but it's always a challenge to try to keep a record on that. 134 00:15:29,420 --> 00:15:35,030 So I'm going to talk about these four strands of work dissemination, capacity building, 135 00:15:35,030 --> 00:15:45,260 advocacy and branding, and this has worked very nicely because we had, I think, 136 00:15:45,260 --> 00:15:54,890 if I may say so because we have had communicators, journalists working alongside with research, 137 00:15:54,890 --> 00:16:03,740 trying to get the key messages out of what we were finding, which is not always easy. 138 00:16:03,740 --> 00:16:07,520 Sometimes researchers tend to say, So what is it that you found? 139 00:16:07,520 --> 00:16:12,440 Well, we found in general terms this and then they generally say, So can I say this? 140 00:16:12,440 --> 00:16:19,730 Well, it all depends, and aid may vary amongst things how you get messages that are not all that clear. 141 00:16:19,730 --> 00:16:28,760 And that's the interaction that has been interesting. So moving on to dissemination, for example, we've had an electric newsletter since 2009. 142 00:16:28,760 --> 00:16:38,540 We have around three thousand subscribers and reaching specialised audiences. 143 00:16:38,540 --> 00:16:46,100 We have been participating in events that have, in some cases, massive participation, 144 00:16:46,100 --> 00:16:56,060 and I guess the general goal in these efforts and we could say a few more activities has been to alert people about young lives. 145 00:16:56,060 --> 00:17:01,490 And I could say that after all these years, it has become sort of a brand name in Peru. 146 00:17:01,490 --> 00:17:12,710 So people know about these projects and. I would like several audiences not necessarily to become researchers themselves, but to be users of research, 147 00:17:12,710 --> 00:17:23,570 and for that we present study sometimes in papers, but sometimes in policy briefs, and we use social networks to present some of the key findings. 148 00:17:23,570 --> 00:17:31,730 And one audience that I have tried, especially to reach in Peru, is the next generation of professionals. 149 00:17:31,730 --> 00:17:45,870 So oftentimes you have university students in classes where they read these manuals with theories on that are often translated from the North. 150 00:17:45,870 --> 00:17:54,460 Sometimes written in Spanish, but it's not often that they look at research and analyse the tables and or qualitative information, 151 00:17:54,460 --> 00:17:59,620 and so we're trying to get to them and I think we have succeeded. 152 00:17:59,620 --> 00:18:07,090 In some cases, we have thousands of downloads of a few of our papers, for example, in terms of capacity building. 153 00:18:07,090 --> 00:18:12,220 We started this a few years ago in something that caught up quickly in Peru. 154 00:18:12,220 --> 00:18:19,300 We started developing this workshop three day workshops on how to use young lives, 155 00:18:19,300 --> 00:18:30,130 data targeting students in graduate studies, policy makers working in officers, working with data professors at universities. 156 00:18:30,130 --> 00:18:37,840 And we have had. Hundred and sixty professionals trained on how to use a young life, 157 00:18:37,840 --> 00:18:42,190 they and we're keeping that because that's one of the things we presented to this foundation. 158 00:18:42,190 --> 00:18:46,650 They said we were like this, we think we need to do this more. 159 00:18:46,650 --> 00:18:53,940 Of course, this is a unique database in Peru and for many other countries, a longitudinal database such as this one. 160 00:18:53,940 --> 00:18:57,450 But capacity building sometimes extends beyond Peru, 161 00:18:57,450 --> 00:19:04,860 and some of us are often called or sometimes have been called to several countries around Latin America, 162 00:19:04,860 --> 00:19:08,700 mostly that are trying to carry out their own longitudinal study. 163 00:19:08,700 --> 00:19:15,840 And they I guess the main question is how have you succeeded in working on this for so many years? 164 00:19:15,840 --> 00:19:23,760 And what should we think about now that could anticipate what's going to come in a few years and so forth? 165 00:19:23,760 --> 00:19:31,320 So and of course, the surveys and databases are available for public use in our web page. 166 00:19:31,320 --> 00:19:38,400 And I don't know. Here are a couple of examples. Gil Melendez was an assistant for one of our senior researchers, 167 00:19:38,400 --> 00:19:46,680 and it's an interesting story because he started very young at young lives as a research assistant, got to work with a database. 168 00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:49,710 It allowed him to be co-author. 169 00:19:49,710 --> 00:19:58,530 His efforts allowed him to be called for in a few other papers, which allowed him to get a scholarship to do a master's in economics. 170 00:19:58,530 --> 00:20:04,920 And now he's back working at the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion working in Kumtor, 171 00:20:04,920 --> 00:20:09,930 which is exactly the project that he was working on with the senior researcher Alan Sanchez. 172 00:20:09,930 --> 00:20:18,150 So I don't know. We feel this is some one of a circle and we have a quote from him here, 173 00:20:18,150 --> 00:20:26,970 and this is one of the UP-AND-COMING young professionals that we have a lot of faith on and several examples like this. 174 00:20:26,970 --> 00:20:39,050 This is another one in Peru. I'm going to come back to this, but social sciences are not part of the research agenda from the national agency, 175 00:20:39,050 --> 00:20:48,080 so science is mostly the hard sciences and what they think are economically productive sciences. 176 00:20:48,080 --> 00:20:51,080 But it's starting to change now when we have some funds. 177 00:20:51,080 --> 00:21:03,470 And so this professor from university in Adichie Park in the south of Peru invited Alan again to work with with them and did a workshop. 178 00:21:03,470 --> 00:21:11,870 But we knew it went beyond that. So this is an interesting pilot experience where he's trained with them, 179 00:21:11,870 --> 00:21:18,770 where he is working with some researchers to write a few papers and get them published. 180 00:21:18,770 --> 00:21:24,320 And so we'll go through the whole process in Peru and many other countries. 181 00:21:24,320 --> 00:21:29,320 I guess you can be a professor without necessarily having published any academic paper, 182 00:21:29,320 --> 00:21:38,180 although universities are supposed to do a lot of research, but there's no not much development on the house. 183 00:21:38,180 --> 00:21:48,110 So we're very grateful to this colleague of ours, Alejandro Tyler, who's very smart and dedicated advocacy. 184 00:21:48,110 --> 00:21:55,610 I'll tell you a couple of words. I mean, we use research, so how do we get some messages to influence policy, but at the same time, 185 00:21:55,610 --> 00:22:04,160 do not sound like an institution that it's promoting some causes no matter what or some form of activism. 186 00:22:04,160 --> 00:22:12,800 So we had to develop research based messages, and that's somewhat of a challenge. 187 00:22:12,800 --> 00:22:20,570 And one of the ways that we think have worked well is having this roundtables to establish dialogues between 188 00:22:20,570 --> 00:22:28,160 academics and policy makers where we present some of the main results of the study and we invite the minister, 189 00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:33,650 vice minister or head of any of the offices that are relevant for this programme. 190 00:22:33,650 --> 00:22:38,510 And we present the results and they go around saying, what is it that it means for them? 191 00:22:38,510 --> 00:22:42,470 And they talk about some of their initiatives on, for example, 192 00:22:42,470 --> 00:22:50,210 teenage pregnancy and try to establish in a way a community of academics and policy 193 00:22:50,210 --> 00:22:55,250 makers that know each other and can collaborate on exploring the meaning of this. 194 00:22:55,250 --> 00:23:05,150 So that policy goes beyond just whatever the president or the minister at the time is saying should happen to look at the data and, 195 00:23:05,150 --> 00:23:13,700 you know, policy based evidence. So and we get called because as I mentioned, we. 196 00:23:13,700 --> 00:23:19,250 Establish a brand and establish a name for ourselves and for great here in a lot of way, 197 00:23:19,250 --> 00:23:26,170 things to young lives, better to also other stories also so several of our researchers has been, 198 00:23:26,170 --> 00:23:33,350 have been or are members of the board of the Central Reserve Bank National Fiscal 199 00:23:33,350 --> 00:23:39,680 Council or advising the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs or Minister of Economics, 200 00:23:39,680 --> 00:23:50,870 National Council of Education, and sometimes internationally, the Advisory Board for the Global Education Monitoring Report and so forth. 201 00:23:50,870 --> 00:23:58,790 And so it's very interesting to have these exchanges because you discuss what is it that the evidence say and the policy makers is going to say. 202 00:23:58,790 --> 00:24:03,560 But we need to make a decision right now, and we only have so much resources. 203 00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:08,930 And then an interesting and challenging dialogue is established now and branding. 204 00:24:08,930 --> 00:24:16,160 I've been mentioned about this, but we have a brochure and we have a website. 205 00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:22,310 I was asking my communications person, what is a UX design? And I'm not going to be able to explain it well, 206 00:24:22,310 --> 00:24:33,220 but has to do with the easiness on how to explore that data in a website, by topics, by specific projects. 207 00:24:33,220 --> 00:24:36,500 And it's all quite new. 208 00:24:36,500 --> 00:24:44,300 So if you want to take a look at it in Spanish and make a comment for us, that would be wonderful. 209 00:24:44,300 --> 00:24:53,300 And here are some examples of we have videos in this search engine that I was talking about and the different types of publication. 210 00:24:53,300 --> 00:25:00,710 At the end of round five, for example, we did a different challenges to publish our summaries or synthesis. 211 00:25:00,710 --> 00:25:07,600 What does it all mean? And I work mostly new location like Joe was saying. 212 00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:15,790 And so I tried to think of a message to get through to to policymakers, and one of the things I've been saying, for example, 213 00:25:15,790 --> 00:25:21,910 is we know that socioeconomic characteristics and educational resource are linked, 214 00:25:21,910 --> 00:25:27,760 but the channels through which they are linked are not always that clear, at least in Peru. 215 00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:34,840 So I've tried to develop a series of paper trying to exemplify those channels 216 00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:40,390 and in the way of educational opportunities showing that socioeconomic status, 217 00:25:40,390 --> 00:25:48,520 for example, wealth at each one can predict the quality of your schools at age 11 or even age 15. 218 00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:56,500 So 14 or 15 years later and the quality of the school they find in several specific ways, of course, for research. 219 00:25:56,500 --> 00:25:59,180 And this is also linked with vocational results. 220 00:25:59,180 --> 00:26:08,290 So if we want to have a system that is more fair, then we need to make educational opportunities more equal. 221 00:26:08,290 --> 00:26:11,860 So that's the way in my case. 222 00:26:11,860 --> 00:26:15,430 But if Alan Sanchez were here on this programme, we're here. 223 00:26:15,430 --> 00:26:23,240 They could tell you about teenage pregnancy and so forth. Well, challenges Latin America is no longer a priority. 224 00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:28,960 We reach, you know, we started as a lower income country and now we're a middle income country. 225 00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:36,070 Peru's even a higher middle income country, but it's a country where we have a lot of inequality. 226 00:26:36,070 --> 00:26:42,760 And as I said, as I suggested before, the national saying, teachers should pick up and invest, 227 00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:47,710 but it's not investing in social science that for that, well, so it's lobbying. 228 00:26:47,710 --> 00:26:55,870 And this year they're starting with a very modest fund, but they are starting to invest in research in social sciences. 229 00:26:55,870 --> 00:26:58,090 Inequality is a huge problem in Latin America. 230 00:26:58,090 --> 00:27:08,650 You must have seen all the protests in Chile, for example, and we're sometimes expecting those kinds of protests in Peru also. 231 00:27:08,650 --> 00:27:23,800 And we hope that through research influencing policy, we may be helpful in finding ways to make system policies more fair and more just for everybody. 232 00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:28,520 And if you want a visit in Spanish, there you go, or in English, the web page. 233 00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:45,240 And I think that's it. I don't know. How am I doing with that? Thank you very much. 234 00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:54,840 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for coming. So we're going to just I'm going to continue the conversation that Santiago just 235 00:27:54,840 --> 00:28:02,220 began by sharing all the challenges as well as the strategies they adopted in Peru. 236 00:28:02,220 --> 00:28:09,270 India's very different context. And as Joe mentioned in India, we're only into southern states. 237 00:28:09,270 --> 00:28:11,130 Actually, we began in one southern state. 238 00:28:11,130 --> 00:28:17,730 By default, we become two because of the bifurcation of united Andhra Pradesh nine to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. 239 00:28:17,730 --> 00:28:28,350 So we are in just Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Just meaning yes, compared to the other countries, we do have limited presence. 240 00:28:28,350 --> 00:28:38,370 So you mentioned, I just want to reiterate some of the features of the longitudinal study, which actually proved very advantageous to us. 241 00:28:38,370 --> 00:28:48,360 The fact that it has a life course perspective means that, you know, we're we're able to talk to different ministries and departments. 242 00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:54,600 You know, it's so right in the beginning, which was the focus was nutrition and health. 243 00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:59,400 Education then became the focus, but continued health continued. 244 00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:05,970 And of course, women and child department and the Ministries of Women and Child Ministry of Social 245 00:29:05,970 --> 00:29:11,280 Justice because of all the inequalities and how minorities need to become the focus. 246 00:29:11,280 --> 00:29:18,390 So we've had a chance. Actually, I see this as a huge advantage because we're able to therefore through the life, you know, 247 00:29:18,390 --> 00:29:29,850 life course perspective as children are index children grew up, we changed our focus areas and we were able to talk to many of these departments. 248 00:29:29,850 --> 00:29:36,180 Of course, I think the fact that you know, we have, we have we look at disaggregated data. 249 00:29:36,180 --> 00:29:44,460 We have, you know, definitely at the state level, we have a good sample in terms of cost in terms of, you know, it's a proper sample. 250 00:29:44,460 --> 00:29:51,750 So we have taken more samples from poorer members, which is our sentinel sites in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana. 251 00:29:51,750 --> 00:29:57,110 So when we speak, of course, we can't speak a generalisation of our findings. 252 00:29:57,110 --> 00:30:04,230 So that's a challenge, right? We can't generalise to the country and say these are findings which we can generalise to the rest of India. 253 00:30:04,230 --> 00:30:08,460 But yes, I think for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, 254 00:30:08,460 --> 00:30:15,210 which somewhere feature in the middle of the round in terms of performance of states, it talks to the averages. 255 00:30:15,210 --> 00:30:21,810 And so we have we are able to talk to policymakers and they listen to the trends that we are observing. 256 00:30:21,810 --> 00:30:25,590 And I think that's that's how we approach policy. 257 00:30:25,590 --> 00:30:36,810 Yes, we do have a very holistic view of child on adolescence and our youth because now our cohorts are 26 and 19 in this round, 258 00:30:36,810 --> 00:30:44,970 so they know more children actually. So we've moved away from and in fact, the next phase of young lives is young lives at work. 259 00:30:44,970 --> 00:30:48,000 That's how we're looking at it. Mixed methods. 260 00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:57,660 Huge advantage to my mind because we've had several subpar studies to actually focus on policy issues which were critical to be answered, 261 00:30:57,660 --> 00:31:01,650 which sometimes we can't answer only from the quantitative analysis. 262 00:31:01,650 --> 00:31:07,470 So the mixed methods approach has been, you know, an advantage to take forward the policy discourse. 263 00:31:07,470 --> 00:31:16,270 And again, our donors were constantly asking us, what is the impact of the research on both programming and policy? 264 00:31:16,270 --> 00:31:23,550 So policy influencing and programme influencing programmes, meaning partners, other partners working on programming? 265 00:31:23,550 --> 00:31:25,500 How are we influencing them? 266 00:31:25,500 --> 00:31:36,870 So like I said, we only and only in those two states in the India challenge, because how do you therefore reach policymakers and speak to them? 267 00:31:36,870 --> 00:31:44,310 Also, in the early years, there was very limited understanding of amongst policymakers and even many researchers of what 268 00:31:44,310 --> 00:31:50,670 the longitudinal data might be able to provide you what the evidence might be able to tell you. 269 00:31:50,670 --> 00:31:59,130 And of course, I think the other issue was in the early years, that's when the, you know, round one, 270 00:31:59,130 --> 00:32:04,290 round two, we always had communication people, but I don't think we had too much to communicate. 271 00:32:04,290 --> 00:32:11,460 In hindsight, I think if I were doing a longitudinal study, I think investments have to be made definitely round three onwards. 272 00:32:11,460 --> 00:32:18,360 That's when you have this wealth of information emerging, and that's when you need to go out and disseminate. 273 00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:27,390 In the early years, we had our common communication and policy people sitting with a third but third party partner. 274 00:32:27,390 --> 00:32:29,280 I think that proved a disadvantage. 275 00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:37,380 But very early on we realised that because that is the researchers who can actually go out there and communicate their findings. 276 00:32:37,380 --> 00:32:44,680 So you needed to have them sitting with your team. And even if I think we had a Santiago Santiago talk about how. 277 00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:51,130 Journalists and his team were a huge advantage. But these journalists have to be sitting within the team understanding and having 278 00:32:51,130 --> 00:32:56,830 those chats with you to be able to actually turn the research into those key messages, 279 00:32:56,830 --> 00:33:01,060 which are easily digestible because they have to be made accessible. 280 00:33:01,060 --> 00:33:05,200 And I think that's the biggest challenge we we face. How do we go out there? 281 00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:14,050 And in that elevator pitch, talk to that policy maker in a couple of minutes over cups of chai, of course, but able to get across to them. 282 00:33:14,050 --> 00:33:20,470 And so I think we realise that some of these messages were getting lost until we moved the team, 283 00:33:20,470 --> 00:33:24,880 the communication and the policy positions back within our own core team. 284 00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:30,520 So that was a learning for us. So some of the strategies which I'm going to share, so we've we set up the country offices. 285 00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:35,500 Like I said, policy communication was integral to the country office at Delhi. 286 00:33:35,500 --> 00:33:42,190 So that's where most of the policies are made. So even though we had our study in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, 287 00:33:42,190 --> 00:33:51,610 we set up the central office in Delhi and we were able to then have these constant interface and engagement with the ministries, 288 00:33:51,610 --> 00:33:54,310 the central ministries, as well as the state government. 289 00:33:54,310 --> 00:34:01,120 So we were able to do this double, you know, engagement with with both the departments and the ministries. 290 00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:07,840 And that, I think, was crucial in being able to move forward with our agenda of policy influencing. 291 00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:18,280 It also meant doing a lot of work outside the research, which meant often you were asked, OK, the Working Group on early childhood development, 292 00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:24,040 making a policy on CCS, or would you be part of the working group to come up with the policy? 293 00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:29,080 Of course, it's outside the purview of the research that we were doing, but because we were on that group, 294 00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:34,790 we were able to make sure all the evidence went into that policy in formulating the policy. 295 00:34:34,790 --> 00:34:42,160 With so many hours of work which one didn't think of being part of the joint review missions of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, 296 00:34:42,160 --> 00:34:46,630 which meant you actually went and looked at the social beyond, 297 00:34:46,630 --> 00:34:48,910 which is elementary education programme, 298 00:34:48,910 --> 00:34:58,090 or that the Teacher Education Programme and reviewed state performance and audited state programmes for the ministry outside the purview directly of, 299 00:34:58,090 --> 00:35:06,490 of course, the work. But I think at the country level, we had complete freedom to take on these pieces of work. 300 00:35:06,490 --> 00:35:09,850 I know Joe was our director, but I don't think, Joe, you have a question. 301 00:35:09,850 --> 00:35:17,500 That's why we were spending 10 days in the field doing an audit for Sal Shihab and often twice in a year. 302 00:35:17,500 --> 00:35:21,670 But that's what actually gets you a seat on the table. Actually, 303 00:35:21,670 --> 00:35:25,870 that's when they start taking you seriously because you're writing the reports and the ground 304 00:35:25,870 --> 00:35:31,750 reports are really critical because an action taken report has to be given six months later, 305 00:35:31,750 --> 00:35:35,800 and you can ask the government questions on what action has been taken. 306 00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:42,160 So sometimes it's these you know, you are in the steering committee of the 11th planning and not by the way, 307 00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:46,960 no Five-Year Plans are made in our country any longer, so we are no longer on the table. 308 00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:53,260 But until the 12th Five-Year Plan, if you were on the steering committee, you were able to therefore squeeze in. 309 00:35:53,260 --> 00:35:59,500 Can you please start tracking all children, vulnerable children if you put that into the plan? 310 00:35:59,500 --> 00:36:04,480 Nobody notices at that time, but then you could ask questions and say, What are you doing about it? 311 00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:08,140 Right? So these are the ways of actually wrangling a position. 312 00:36:08,140 --> 00:36:14,770 And we also, I think what really helped us with setting up a national advisory board at the country level, 313 00:36:14,770 --> 00:36:20,410 these were mainly people from the ministries at the state level as well as the national. 314 00:36:20,410 --> 00:36:25,840 Some national universities, academics of high repute, Tata Institute, 315 00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:33,130 the National University of Education, Planning and administration partners like UNICEF Save the Children. 316 00:36:33,130 --> 00:36:38,020 So partners, I think that it also there is a larger ownership. 317 00:36:38,020 --> 00:36:43,690 Like I said, we not just had to influence policy, but our mandate was also influencing programming. 318 00:36:43,690 --> 00:36:48,010 So we were able because these were partners coming on to our advisory board. 319 00:36:48,010 --> 00:36:51,940 They also we developed a relationship where we could actually go in and say, 320 00:36:51,940 --> 00:36:55,810 You're developing your strategy, your country strategy for the next five years. 321 00:36:55,810 --> 00:37:01,660 How can we support you? And they would call us onto the table to do that. 322 00:37:01,660 --> 00:37:10,450 We also had huge amount of, I think, flexibility by our donors and new donors coming in beside Difford as well. 323 00:37:10,450 --> 00:37:17,200 We, you know, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights acknowledged Young Lives India as a technical partner, 324 00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:26,710 which meant we were able to support them in making their strategy plans and looking at their documents and in doing research for them. 325 00:37:26,710 --> 00:37:31,240 We don't, by the way, take money from the government, but we do work for the government. 326 00:37:31,240 --> 00:37:40,180 So we would now we would obviously never need a donor to help us write the report and do the research, even if it was secondary research. 327 00:37:40,180 --> 00:37:44,050 But it became a Government of India document rather than. 328 00:37:44,050 --> 00:37:47,810 Document, which is what is more important than publishing your own papers. 329 00:37:47,810 --> 00:37:58,660 And in this instance, the fact that we had 37 percent of our older cohort married by 19 and 28 percent by the age before the age of 18, 330 00:37:58,660 --> 00:38:11,800 shook up the Ministry of Women and Child, as well as NC PCR to say, Can you do an analysis of the census, which we did for them with support from CIF? 331 00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:17,290 And then that became a government policy document because it was published by them. 332 00:38:17,290 --> 00:38:25,990 So we've been able to. So like I said, I think the fact that we had flexibility to respond to policy make those demands outside 333 00:38:25,990 --> 00:38:34,510 of just the core longitudinal analysis has also been a huge way of impacting policy. 334 00:38:34,510 --> 00:38:36,880 We've also built lots of networks. 335 00:38:36,880 --> 00:38:44,620 We've done data usage workshops, often with national universities, say, for educational planning and administration, 336 00:38:44,620 --> 00:38:50,650 where they will call them department heads from different universities from across the state. 337 00:38:50,650 --> 00:38:59,020 So we don't spend any money. We just go in there and we say we will be our resource people and you organise a two day data usage workshop. 338 00:38:59,020 --> 00:39:04,330 Similarly, and Data Institute and Institute of Education brought in IGAD. 339 00:39:04,330 --> 00:39:11,770 Ah, so they will invite us and we will go, and we will just run the workshop for faculty members, particularly in India. 340 00:39:11,770 --> 00:39:17,920 If your faculty members don't know how to use the data, they're not going to be able to support their doctoral students. 341 00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:19,330 So that's that's the challenge. 342 00:39:19,330 --> 00:39:27,700 And today we have about 35 doctoral dissertations coming out of the Young Lions data from India, which I think is a big step forward. 343 00:39:27,700 --> 00:39:31,840 Similarly, you know, we've we've had networks with. 344 00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:40,630 So Joe mentioned UCL novella was a project that we we had a collaboration with with them on. 345 00:39:40,630 --> 00:39:43,960 And we similarly, you know, this is the picture. 346 00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:54,760 Here is the the secretary for image and asked where we had the School Effectiveness Survey dissemination 347 00:39:54,760 --> 00:40:02,110 roundtables on childhood poverty happening on the on the left hand side in the corner of the upper corner. 348 00:40:02,110 --> 00:40:08,590 So we constantly try and put together roundtables, have conversations and dialogues, 349 00:40:08,590 --> 00:40:17,290 as Santiago mentioned with policymakers in the room, because there is no point of having the convert to talk to just each other. 350 00:40:17,290 --> 00:40:24,850 So we make sure that we have the policymaker in the room. Otherwise, there's no point having these meetings. 351 00:40:24,850 --> 00:40:30,280 I think what's also very important as we just don't look at the policymakers in that way for 352 00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:37,150 us district level dissemination and even disseminating and sharing what we call reciprocity, 353 00:40:37,150 --> 00:40:40,930 even with our communities where we work with the children who we work with, 354 00:40:40,930 --> 00:40:47,080 I think we can do this all without the children and families who are involved in this study. 355 00:40:47,080 --> 00:40:57,460 So I think just to give you this quote from in round five, we went back to the children and we made a little booklet with stories, 356 00:40:57,460 --> 00:41:03,340 profile child profiles, which of course, anonymized from all the four countries and children. 357 00:41:03,340 --> 00:41:10,270 You know, read the books. And they were really thrilled to read the little books and said, Oh my God, I've been part of a study like this, right? 358 00:41:10,270 --> 00:41:14,050 And these are the quotes from them. I wish people would buy and read the book. 359 00:41:14,050 --> 00:41:21,430 They put it up for sale. Of course it wasn't. There's so many books out there, but I sincerely wish that people will read this book. 360 00:41:21,430 --> 00:41:25,900 My participation helped me understand about the research. It's to improve policies. 361 00:41:25,900 --> 00:41:29,960 They would often ask us what's in it for me in the beginning, right? What is in it for me? 362 00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:33,790 If you don't give them anything that when we were telling them, 363 00:41:33,790 --> 00:41:39,980 we thought we were saying goodbye in the fifth round and some of them actually cried and especially the children and said, 364 00:41:39,980 --> 00:41:46,390 really said, What do we do for you? When you listen to us? You know, that's why I think it's just that space children get. 365 00:41:46,390 --> 00:41:50,110 And we are really lucky that we've had very low attrition. 366 00:41:50,110 --> 00:41:54,640 Yesterday, we were looking at the trekking in Peru and India, which just got over. 367 00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:57,610 I think you've got last less than five or six percent attrition. 368 00:41:57,610 --> 00:42:01,990 I think we have less than one percent attrition between the last round and it's amazing 369 00:42:01,990 --> 00:42:07,000 and it's because of the surveyor's and the commitment and the dedication of the team. 370 00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:11,560 I think that's we owe it all to them completely. 371 00:42:11,560 --> 00:42:18,940 We also learn to engage with stakeholders who traditionally we didn't engage with people like the judiciary. 372 00:42:18,940 --> 00:42:25,540 And really, this again, I'm going to say I'm not going to take this, that, you know, this was strategic and thought of, not at all. 373 00:42:25,540 --> 00:42:32,710 In fact, the NTPC asked us, Why don't you invite justice LaCour when we were, you know, 374 00:42:32,710 --> 00:42:37,840 disseminating the census report and just as Lakota, as a Supreme Court judge. 375 00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:41,650 And I said, Sure, let's call him. I wasn't sure what it would do. 376 00:42:41,650 --> 00:42:44,530 But just as local came on his. 377 00:42:44,530 --> 00:42:53,680 You know, we make judgements regarding child marriage all the time, and why haven't you come and showed us these findings at the Supreme Court? 378 00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:58,720 So he organised a meeting of the Supreme Court where we we shared the evidence. 379 00:42:58,720 --> 00:43:02,810 It also happened to be a Government of India report. Remember, it was in our report. 380 00:43:02,810 --> 00:43:12,220 So the logo was also the government of India. And lo and behold, the next we had, you know, a High Court ordered this. 381 00:43:12,220 --> 00:43:21,160 We had a High Court, a Supreme Court judgement on 11th October 2017 from a double bench, 382 00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:27,730 which ordered this report several times, which criminalised sex with a minor wife. 383 00:43:27,730 --> 00:43:30,530 And when I spoke to the judges, they said, You know, 384 00:43:30,530 --> 00:43:37,540 it's the report really helped us understand what young girls who are forced into marriages go through. 385 00:43:37,540 --> 00:43:46,480 So this was like a deterrent, you know, to stop child marriage. I'm getting a sign from, OK, I'm going to just play this. 386 00:43:46,480 --> 00:44:02,990 This is meet the eye of the seal at the launch of the last round just to end. 387 00:44:02,990 --> 00:44:07,290 First of all, I'm delighted to be here. 388 00:44:07,290 --> 00:44:18,780 On the occasion of the very unique study, and let me first congratulate the young lives for this very, very comprehensive study to my mind, you know, 389 00:44:18,780 --> 00:44:25,710 the key features of this research component in the study in quantitative research with 390 00:44:25,710 --> 00:44:31,830 five survey rounds of all 2000 children and their caregivers and community leaders. 391 00:44:31,830 --> 00:44:38,520 And then the qualitative research with in-depth interviews with a small group of 48 children and their peers and parents, 392 00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:44,760 and to school service at its primary and secondary conducted in private and government schools. 393 00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:50,910 It is a very, very comprehensive, very in-depth, two very comprehensive, very detailed study. 394 00:44:50,910 --> 00:44:55,830 And this brings out very sharp lessons for all of us, 395 00:44:55,830 --> 00:45:04,290 and longitudinal studies like this are truly invaluable for us to assess and to reassess what 396 00:45:04,290 --> 00:45:14,100 to measure at a national scale and to understand the issues our policies have to address. 397 00:45:14,100 --> 00:45:20,100 Since this study measures the foundation it causes of poverty the children grow up with. 398 00:45:20,100 --> 00:45:28,040 It also gives us, in many ways, the tools to unlock wealth for them, and I think it's very, 399 00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:34,240 very important because studies like this was put out in public domain. 400 00:45:34,240 --> 00:45:49,770 OK, well, let's stop here. So thank you very much. 401 00:45:49,770 --> 00:45:57,630 So the advantage of going last is that you get a chance to hear what the others have said and not have to speak about that. 402 00:45:57,630 --> 00:46:06,690 And actually, we didn't look at each other's presentations and in many ways what we're talking about is very similar, but also very different. 403 00:46:06,690 --> 00:46:11,580 And it also meant that the kinds of issues that Santiago talked about in terms 404 00:46:11,580 --> 00:46:17,290 of capacity building are very much echo with what we were doing in Ethiopia, 405 00:46:17,290 --> 00:46:25,620 but I don't need to talk about that. And likewise, Randall was talking a lot about engagement with communities and with senior politicians, 406 00:46:25,620 --> 00:46:33,360 which also we have been doing, but I am not going to be talking about in this presentation. 407 00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:38,250 I want to talk to you about two aspects of the work in in Ethiopia. 408 00:46:38,250 --> 00:46:45,780 First of all, the challenges and opportunities of the scale of this endeavour of trying to work across countries, 409 00:46:45,780 --> 00:46:51,960 across sites, across disciplines, across different sectors. 410 00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:58,680 So both in terms of space, but also in terms of time over this long period. 411 00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:03,600 The hallmarks of the approach in an observational way. 412 00:47:03,600 --> 00:47:16,470 And then move on more specifically to the impact challenges with the way in which the whole ideology of impact imposes constraints on us, 413 00:47:16,470 --> 00:47:25,590 on the challenges, working with government and working with the larger players that influence the context in which we work 414 00:47:25,590 --> 00:47:33,960 and suggesting that we need to think of a different way of working and a more collaborative approach. 415 00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:46,890 So in Ethiopia, The Young Lives, a study that has more countries that have progressed in many ways and are seen as models. 416 00:47:46,890 --> 00:47:55,140 So the Asian countries are very much ones that are looked up as examples of having moved up to middle income status. 417 00:47:55,140 --> 00:48:05,550 And that's the ambition in Ethiopia. So when we look at the mid-day meal in India or we look at the pre-school approaches in other countries, 418 00:48:05,550 --> 00:48:08,940 those are things that the Ethiopian government can look up to. 419 00:48:08,940 --> 00:48:18,510 But of course, then always there is that tension of feeling that the resources are not there and that there are specificities in the country. 420 00:48:18,510 --> 00:48:21,840 And Ethiopia is not like anywhere else in the world. 421 00:48:21,840 --> 00:48:31,680 And sort of the eyes glaze over after a while when we try to provide evidence from other countries. 422 00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:39,690 So it is it is quite a challenge. And then we have 20 sites, but then people say, Oh, well, it's five regions. 423 00:48:39,690 --> 00:48:45,150 What about the other regions? And there's the specificity of the particular sites. 424 00:48:45,150 --> 00:48:49,680 There are the urban rural contrasts and we have the different regions. 425 00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:55,050 And because we wanted to continue to follow the children over so long, 426 00:48:55,050 --> 00:49:04,290 we didn't go to the agro pastoralist areas that were much more difficult to keep that kind of continuity. 427 00:49:04,290 --> 00:49:11,490 And as Randy was saying, young lives has managed to have quite a lower attrition. 428 00:49:11,490 --> 00:49:16,440 There's also the fact that these places are changing extremely dramatically. 429 00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:22,320 So one of the sites is this massive plastic factory that is being built bang next to the site. 430 00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:28,350 So the site is going to change really dramatically. And this round we're looking at labour issues. 431 00:49:28,350 --> 00:49:38,100 So wage labour and so forth is going to change. And the other the other site in in that in the capital city, one of the sites is a very poor area. 432 00:49:38,100 --> 00:49:48,000 So there was a a bias towards selecting more areas that were poor and food insecure in the rural areas. 433 00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:55,530 And this site has now been completely knocked down. And so the children have moved to other areas. 434 00:49:55,530 --> 00:50:01,140 And eight years ago, we did a study talking to them about what they thought about neighbourhood and what 435 00:50:01,140 --> 00:50:06,420 they thought about moving to other areas and living in these new condominiums. 436 00:50:06,420 --> 00:50:12,630 And now, right now, as I speak, we're going to look for them and we found that they are indifferent. 437 00:50:12,630 --> 00:50:17,520 They move scattered to other areas in two particular concentrations. 438 00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:25,770 So all these changes are quite important challenges in trying to understand how these communities are changing, 439 00:50:25,770 --> 00:50:31,960 how the lives of children are changing. 440 00:50:31,960 --> 00:50:44,200 So it's a project that is allegedly an ostensibly and claims to be mixed methods, but of course, in many of these large scale projects, 441 00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:49,450 the quantitative side tends to dominate with the all statistics, 442 00:50:49,450 --> 00:50:57,160 even though in terms of communicating our messages, the empathy that we can get, the readers, 443 00:50:57,160 --> 00:51:05,830 particularly policymakers that can look at stories, live stories, the pictures, even though they're not necessarily the pictures, 444 00:51:05,830 --> 00:51:08,380 they're not pictures of the children that we study, 445 00:51:08,380 --> 00:51:17,380 but ones in similar circumstances due to the ethical concern with not with keeping the anonymity of our respondents. 446 00:51:17,380 --> 00:51:29,230 These are very compelling. So this kind of being able to juggle between this large scale statistics and the stories is really extremely important. 447 00:51:29,230 --> 00:51:38,530 Even though I think as a study, it's quite difficult for us to be genuinely interdisciplinary rather than multidisciplinary. 448 00:51:38,530 --> 00:51:45,070 So I'm being very open about this criticism from somebody that's on the qualitative side. 449 00:51:45,070 --> 00:51:54,460 And even in the design, there were five rounds of quantitative survey and only four rounds of waves of qualitative research. 450 00:51:54,460 --> 00:52:00,850 Although in Ethiopia we have done a fifth round now and now round six. 451 00:52:00,850 --> 00:52:07,100 There is funding to continue with the work, but only so far for the quantitative side. 452 00:52:07,100 --> 00:52:15,250 So one has to acknowledge that in these large scale projects, the economic, statistical, 453 00:52:15,250 --> 00:52:26,950 large scale approach tends to dominate over what in terms of policy and communication terms, is often what really makes the difference. 454 00:52:26,950 --> 00:52:36,550 And then the cross-sectional aspect that Erin was talking about a lot the interaction between between sectors. 455 00:52:36,550 --> 00:52:44,620 So being able to talk across these different sectors is extremely important in the life cycle and a holistic approach. 456 00:52:44,620 --> 00:52:51,760 But it's extremely difficult because of the way in which so much of both the way government 457 00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:59,590 works and the way that the donor community works is is very much siloed in particular areas. 458 00:52:59,590 --> 00:53:08,550 So for instance, Rand, who talked a lot about child marriage and likewise we did a lot on this. 459 00:53:08,550 --> 00:53:16,290 So a long term approach over 15 years now coming even more than that is really important 460 00:53:16,290 --> 00:53:23,100 because so much research is depends on what's happening if there's a famine or a drought or, 461 00:53:23,100 --> 00:53:28,560 you know, a inflation at a particular time, that really skews the results. 462 00:53:28,560 --> 00:53:33,930 And there is this cumulative effect and the life cycle and intergenerational and the 463 00:53:33,930 --> 00:53:38,430 fact that we've been working for so long means that we have a place at the table. 464 00:53:38,430 --> 00:53:51,180 We build up relationships, we get no. And it adds an element of sustainability that goes away from the problem of short term donor cycles. 465 00:53:51,180 --> 00:53:58,740 So with UNICEF, we were able to get some additional funding, but only for one year and then at the end of that, yet again, we can try. 466 00:53:58,740 --> 00:54:06,210 And this longer term funding that we've been able to secure has actually meant that we've been able 467 00:54:06,210 --> 00:54:15,650 to do things in a much better organised and more sustainable and thought through cumulative way. 468 00:54:15,650 --> 00:54:24,980 And, of course, the. This luxury of being able to do a longer term observational research that isn't 469 00:54:24,980 --> 00:54:33,230 constrained by the dictates of a more evaluative and experimental modular approach, 470 00:54:33,230 --> 00:54:40,550 which is now the order of the day, means that we can look much broader, broader issues, 471 00:54:40,550 --> 00:54:50,660 less at predetermined outcomes and come up with new things that we hadn't predicted, such as the catch up growth from malnutrition. 472 00:54:50,660 --> 00:54:58,550 Whereas the sort of tendency now for the large scale research is very much focussing on the assumption 473 00:54:58,550 --> 00:55:06,680 that our cities are the gold standard and that one has to look just very narrowly at impact. 474 00:55:06,680 --> 00:55:20,280 And this tends to ignore the actual reality of how social change occurs and wider issues of how policy does actually change. 475 00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:29,280 So one way that young lives got round, this problem was to do additional focussed studies and Ethiopia. 476 00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:36,750 You can see the list on health care financing on food security and safety nets, one on orphaned, 477 00:55:36,750 --> 00:55:45,600 vulnerable children and urban relocation, one on child work, child marriage, early learning, violence and so forth. 478 00:55:45,600 --> 00:55:51,960 No impact, Ology, I just came up with that term last night, I haven't even Googled if it exists. 479 00:55:51,960 --> 00:55:57,060 The pressure to to make false promises in applications is just terrible. 480 00:55:57,060 --> 00:55:59,790 It really we we we are there. 481 00:55:59,790 --> 00:56:08,770 If we want to get a grant, we have to claim that we're going to reach large numbers, be able to change policies and it's just not true. 482 00:56:08,770 --> 00:56:19,000 And then the log frames on reporting on that are really tyrannical because it makes forcing us to just do things in a very stereotypical way, 483 00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:24,280 which takes out a lot of the potential for innovation in research. 484 00:56:24,280 --> 00:56:33,760 And and I must say that one of the fantastic things about the collaboration with Oxford has been the way in which we are. 485 00:56:33,760 --> 00:56:44,800 Oxford gave the countries the ability to follow our noses as as they say and take things in directions that we thought were important. 486 00:56:44,800 --> 00:56:50,680 And if we had a convincing rationale, lots of new things happened in Ethiopia. 487 00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:56,020 We felt that a relocation study was really important eight years down the road. 488 00:56:56,020 --> 00:57:02,800 It is going to provide some genuine new, innovative research wasn't done in the other countries. 489 00:57:02,800 --> 00:57:08,620 But Joe and Graham were convinced, and they found the funding for us to do it. 490 00:57:08,620 --> 00:57:14,560 And even though the four countries have been doing the same research, 491 00:57:14,560 --> 00:57:21,400 the way we have done it and gone about it is often quite different and is context specific and country specific. 492 00:57:21,400 --> 00:57:26,470 So Rand Nguyen Santiago talked about their advisory boards in Ethiopia. 493 00:57:26,470 --> 00:57:33,520 The advisory board wasn't working very well, and we replaced it with a child research and practise forum, which I'll talk about. 494 00:57:33,520 --> 00:57:40,240 The theory theory of change is straitjacket. It's become the norm that you have to have theories of change. 495 00:57:40,240 --> 00:57:43,780 If you look at the theories of change that we did four or five years ago, 496 00:57:43,780 --> 00:57:48,610 that crap, that useless because things move on because realities are different. 497 00:57:48,610 --> 00:57:53,740 And so, you know, I don't think that they are in. 498 00:57:53,740 --> 00:58:02,680 It's a useful mechanism to start thinking, but they are in boxes that that just don't can't understand, 499 00:58:02,680 --> 00:58:12,580 can't give you a real sense of how things actually do change because they are far too mechanistic. 500 00:58:12,580 --> 00:58:20,110 And policy change is really non-linear, and we can talk about this in the discussion, but I think it's a way it needs. 501 00:58:20,110 --> 00:58:26,980 It's something where there is an argument for change that build up to a tipping point with cumulative messages that 502 00:58:26,980 --> 00:58:38,830 various studies show and that it is also the more influential donors and projects often have much more ability. 503 00:58:38,830 --> 00:58:43,510 And so it's a question of working together and working behind the scenes and working 504 00:58:43,510 --> 00:58:51,160 with people and using Santiago showed how the policy briefs you go on the website, 505 00:58:51,160 --> 00:58:57,560 you'll see 86 policy briefs, the social media and so forth. 506 00:58:57,560 --> 00:59:05,600 Now, working with government, Santiago had a slide there that he didn't end up talking about at the end about how 507 00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:10,040 working with government does actually constrain what you can do with the media. 508 00:59:10,040 --> 00:59:21,650 And that's very much the case also in Ethiopia. And we do work with particular ministries, Ministry of Education, Labour and Social Affairs, women, 509 00:59:21,650 --> 00:59:27,770 children and youth where the Child Research and Practise Forum is housed actually in the ministry. 510 00:59:27,770 --> 00:59:36,980 And they asked us for gender norms. Training ground was also mentioned many other cases in India of training and capacity building. 511 00:59:36,980 --> 00:59:49,310 Santiago mentioned there was the London Summit on Child Marriage and FGM c young lives was us to participate in the planning of that and so forth. 512 00:59:49,310 --> 00:59:59,480 And also in cross-sectoral areas. But there is the politics of the said and the unsayable and the things that you can say in public and the 513 00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:09,860 things that you say behind closed doors and the importance of being able to acknowledge important things. 514 01:00:09,860 --> 01:00:11,810 But and changes. 515 01:00:11,810 --> 01:00:25,220 And that's one of the beauties of a long scale research that does is able to show how tremendously our countries have changed over the past 15 years. 516 01:00:25,220 --> 01:00:29,450 The lives of children have changed. That has to be acknowledged. 517 01:00:29,450 --> 01:00:37,040 And then having acknowledged all the positive things, we can be really critical and openly critical. 518 01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:43,490 And the government in Ethiopia that is often very suspicious of research is willing to accept criticism 519 01:00:43,490 --> 01:00:53,570 from young lives because they know that the broad story of change is really impressive and quite amazing. 520 01:00:53,570 --> 01:01:00,560 And then when we say, Well, this isn't working, the pace of the early marriage change is not fast enough. 521 01:01:00,560 --> 01:01:04,310 Divorced women are facing problems. Violence affecting girls. 522 01:01:04,310 --> 01:01:08,590 We can really enter a dialogue because there is a recognition. 523 01:01:08,590 --> 01:01:18,290 Yeah, OK, so I'm running out of time. Here's an example from work we did with the Ministry of Education, and I won't go into it. 524 01:01:18,290 --> 01:01:29,660 But just to say that it was very much a responsive thing where we started off with a review, had consultations in the regions, we had a task force. 525 01:01:29,660 --> 01:01:34,100 We we worked with the Education Task Force. 526 01:01:34,100 --> 01:01:42,380 This was a self funded study. And then we went in to look at the question of the supply side and the demand side, 527 01:01:42,380 --> 01:01:49,380 and it was kind of very much working in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education. 528 01:01:49,380 --> 01:01:55,950 I'm emphasise that it's really important for others to take on our message as part of the problem with the way that 529 01:01:55,950 --> 01:02:05,250 the donors and funders operate is they want to segregate the impact of what they do from the rest of what happens. 530 01:02:05,250 --> 01:02:09,720 And actually, it's much more important that say, in this case, 531 01:02:09,720 --> 01:02:18,300 UNICEF picks up on something that we says or does a joint brief then that we produce two extra briefs. 532 01:02:18,300 --> 01:02:20,610 And so we've produced now five briefs. 533 01:02:20,610 --> 01:02:29,970 We've jointly with UNICEF that have funded this thing and the last one and end with this the child research and Practise Forum. 534 01:02:29,970 --> 01:02:41,430 So this is a forum with 600 people that are on the mailing list and we meet every month on the last Thursday of the month. 535 01:02:41,430 --> 01:02:48,630 And anybody can present so it's not young lives. It's organised jointly with the Ministry of Women and UNICEF. 536 01:02:48,630 --> 01:02:52,800 But we encourage all kinds of people to present there, 537 01:02:52,800 --> 01:03:01,980 and it gives an opportunity with the newsletters and the annual summaries to really create a context for discussion, 538 01:03:01,980 --> 01:03:10,200 presentations and meeting behind the scenes in a context which is very fractured between opposition. 539 01:03:10,200 --> 01:03:17,280 At the time, the The Child Research and Practise Forum was was established 10 years ago. 540 01:03:17,280 --> 01:03:25,440 There was really quite a lot of tensions between government, the NGOs, the donors, and this was a forum that brought us all together. 541 01:03:25,440 --> 01:03:30,330 And so I think it's been quite a useful attempt to get people together. 542 01:03:30,330 --> 01:03:42,740 Last slide. So the continued involvement over a long period has been key to the ways in which we are policy engagement has been effective. 543 01:03:42,740 --> 01:03:47,550 A short period, we wouldn't have been able to do anything like this. 544 01:03:47,550 --> 01:03:54,180 The way that we've been able to be flexible and establish trust has also been extremely important. 545 01:03:54,180 --> 01:04:01,500 The working capacity building working together with key ministries, the Child Research and Practise Forum, 546 01:04:01,500 --> 01:04:11,910 a new centre of Child Ethiopian Centre for Child Research established with UNICEF that is a legacy of young lives, is also very important. 547 01:04:11,910 --> 01:04:19,800 And then the networks and the forums that provide evidence for debate that help that process of the cumulative conceptual change. 548 01:04:19,800 --> 01:04:23,760 And I think that that's really what I'd like to to stress the bridging of the 549 01:04:23,760 --> 01:04:30,270 divides and that we really need to change our way about thinking of impact. 550 01:04:30,270 --> 01:04:34,350 It's not that you do one little piece of research and then you get a policy change. 551 01:04:34,350 --> 01:04:49,853 It's actually working with others to begin to change the climate cumulatively till you reach a tipping point.