Thanks for your work on this. One charity to consider is Raising Voices, which I think fits their mandate exceptionally well (and which I also think should be considered by the wider EA community).
Full disclosure: I’m a former employee of Raising Voices.
RV has a program to prevent violence against children in schools. It is well-evidenced—there are now more than 25 peer-reviewed papers, including RCTs and cost-effectiveness evaluations, available on their VAC prevention program. They are based in Uganda, and their theory of change explicitly focuses on empowerment. They currently reach 750 schools across Uganda, and are currently scaling up across the country. Their work also has the potential for wider impact, since they lead several global coalitions. This sum would be significant in the context of their annual budget. Preventing violence in schools is good in itself, but there is good evidence that it relates to positive physical health, mental health, educational and economic outcomes.
tomwein, I just looked through the RCT. The reduction in violence is indeed significant and promising. In terms of test scores, though, they report “There was no evidence that the intervention had an impact on any educational test scores”. Test scores and income were the main metrics we were focusing on for education interventions, so this intervention doesn’t seem like a good match to the donors’ preferences at this stage. From reading the RCT, it seems that studies about violence prevention in school are quite novel and that the evidence base is still thin, so again this wouldn’t match well with the donors’ wish to support interventions with strong evidence of effectiveness. Though obviously it’s very valuable to be gathering evidence given the lack of previous studies.
Thanks for your work on this. One charity to consider is Raising Voices, which I think fits their mandate exceptionally well (and which I also think should be considered by the wider EA community).
Full disclosure: I’m a former employee of Raising Voices.
RV has a program to prevent violence against children in schools. It is well-evidenced—there are now more than 25 peer-reviewed papers, including RCTs and cost-effectiveness evaluations, available on their VAC prevention program. They are based in Uganda, and their theory of change explicitly focuses on empowerment. They currently reach 750 schools across Uganda, and are currently scaling up across the country. Their work also has the potential for wider impact, since they lead several global coalitions. This sum would be significant in the context of their annual budget. Preventing violence in schools is good in itself, but there is good evidence that it relates to positive physical health, mental health, educational and economic outcomes.
Thanks for the recommendation, tomwein. Could you provide a link to the RCTs or other experimental evidence?
Of course—this is the main RCT: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(15)00060-1/abstract
tomwein, I just looked through the RCT. The reduction in violence is indeed significant and promising. In terms of test scores, though, they report “There was no evidence that the intervention had an impact on any educational test scores”. Test scores and income were the main metrics we were focusing on for education interventions, so this intervention doesn’t seem like a good match to the donors’ preferences at this stage. From reading the RCT, it seems that studies about violence prevention in school are quite novel and that the evidence base is still thin, so again this wouldn’t match well with the donors’ wish to support interventions with strong evidence of effectiveness. Though obviously it’s very valuable to be gathering evidence given the lack of previous studies.
Perfect, thanks!