Don’t know anything more than just what is written here about it, but this pinged my absurdity filter. This sounds totally within the expected teething problems of a new charity.
Sounds like the fact there was already substantial doubt over whether the program worked was a key part of the decision to shut it down. That suggests that if the same kind of scandal had affected a current top charity, they would have worked harder to continue the project.
In the blog post, Evidence Action is pretty clear about why they didn’t relaunch with a new partner:
Ultimately, we determined that the opportunity cost for Evidence Action of rebuilding the program is too high relative to other opportunities we have to meet our vision of measurably improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Importantly, we are not saying that seasonal migration subsidies do not work or that they lack impact; rather, No Lean Season is unlikely to be among the best strategic opportunities for Evidence Action to achieve our vision.
And they later say:
We also want to ensure that the takeaway is not that if a program faces challenges, an NGO should walk away from doing work that measurably improves the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of people. International development programs are complex – operating in high-risk settings where the risk of corruption and a whole host of other challenges is high.
Don’t know anything more than just what is written here about it, but this pinged my absurdity filter. This sounds totally within the expected teething problems of a new charity.
Sounds like the fact there was already substantial doubt over whether the program worked was a key part of the decision to shut it down. That suggests that if the same kind of scandal had affected a current top charity, they would have worked harder to continue the project.
In the blog post, Evidence Action is pretty clear about why they didn’t relaunch with a new partner:
And they later say: