South African colleague Dr. Neissan Besharati has published an article in that country’s Business Day arguing for more rigorous monitoring and evaluation of community social investment initiatives funded by major corporations. While CSI is a source of significant funding for South African communities, and a number of companies are best-practice leaders in assessing the performance…(Read more)
Category: News
Africa’s Digital Revolution” Promise and Peril
In his new piece for the Brookings Institution on technology in Africa, Nathaniel Allen writes that: “Across the African continent, the relentless spread of networks, sensors, artificial intelligence, and automation is driving a revolution to an unknown destination.” For states to optimize the benefits and manage the risks of this digital revolution for their citizens,…(Read more)
Community Campus Engage Canada
Community Campus Engage Canada, hosted at the Trent Centre for Community-Based Education in Haliburton County, Ontario, and affiliated with Trent University, has begun to roll out its programming activities. For CCEC: “Community-campus engagement (CCE) happens when communities and universities/colleges address critical community issues through collaborative research, learning and creative projects.” Incubated by the seven-year, SSHRC-funded…(Read more)
Canadian Experience in Impact Investing in Emerging Markets
In January, in Zoom presentations organized by Global Affairs Canada to impact investing stakeholders in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Dr. Ted Jackson, President of E.T. Jackson and Associates, summarized lessons from Canadian experiences in emerging markets, which include: combining awareness-building and early-stage financing through television and other media, deepening the business case for…(Read more)
Bill Gates on How to Avoid A Climate Disaster
In an excerpt from his new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”, Bill Gates exhorts governments to boldly and ambitiously use all the policy tools at their disposal, urgently. Reviewing experiences with renewable energy, he writes: “The point of these stories is not that solar and wind are the answer to all our electricity…(Read more)
The Bipartisan Alliance that Secured the US Election
In a riveting piece of investigative journalism, Molly Ball at Time Magazine has written the history of the secret, bipartisan alliance involving business, labour, Democrats, Republicans, voter registration groups, and more that worked behind the scenes to ensure that the US presidential election was held freely and fairly and that its results were maintained. She…(Read more)
Boards are Obstructing ESG–at Their Own Peril
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Tensie Whelan underscores the lack of commitment to and expertise in analyzing and action on material ESG issues among corporate boards. She writes: “Ensuring good performance on material ESG issues is not only a board’s fiduciary duty, important to investors and the public, and supportive of long-term strong financial…(Read more)
Doing No Harm With Technology in Evaluation
Posting at AEA365, the American Evaluation Association’s blog site, Antony Maikuri, Veronica Olazabal and Vidhya Shanker make the case for evaluators supporting strategies and tools for digital decolonization, data sovereignty and data ethics in their work. “Evaluators can distinguish among the types of value that data can produce, and for whom,” write the authors. “These types range…(Read more)
Canadian Evaluation Leader John Mayne’s Legacy
Members of the international evaluation field were saddened to learn of the passing of John Mayne, a Canadian leader known for his open and thoughtful approach, as Patricia Rogers of Better Evaluation has underscored, to continuously improving evaluation theory and practice. In an excellent overview of John’s work, Dr. Rogers highlights his legacy in three…(Read more)
Canadian ESG Assets Surge to $3.2 Trillion
On November 26, 2020, the Responsible Investment Association reported that ESG-screened assets under management in Canada have grown to $3.2 trillion. To read the report, click here