Detail from a mural created at the Cartagena Data Festival (Image Credit: Jorge Martin/ Cartagenda Data Festival, used with permission) This piece is cross-posted from www.Post2015.org. The Data Revolution for Sustainable Development has brought all kinds of data nerds out of the woodwork. Enthusiasts are talking about the need for better data, using data to make better decisions, …
True voice is unlimited power: detail from student work at High Tech Middle School in San Diego. (Photo Credit: Jacqueline Nader/ Hewlett Foundation) These days, teachers are often treated as both the cause of all our problems and their solution, responsible for everything from alleviating poverty to the grades on an individual student’s report card. …
As Sarah Lucas wrote in her recent blog post, “April 2015: Five Headlines from a Big Month for the Data Revolution,” one of the key “headlines” from April was an event hosted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) during which the African Data Consensus was adopted. This post highlights the event, and is …
Cheikh Mbacké (Photo Credit: The National Academy of Sciences, licensed under CC BY 2.0) Through their path-breaking work and sheer force of personality, some individuals shape whole fields in the most positive ways. Cheikh Mbacké is one of those people. His influence on population research in Africa is deep and long-lasting—and now fully recognized by his …
Should we welcome the emergence of vape-filled rooms? (Photo Credit: Paul Hansen, licensed under CC BY 2.0) Are democracy reformers searching in the wrong places for the solution to what ails our politics? That’s the premise of a bold stroke of a white paper entitled, “Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen …
Fay Twerksy, director of our Effective Philanthropy Group, reminds us that even strategic philanthropy is rooted in love in a response to Paul Brest’s “Strategic Philanthropy and Its Discontents” at Stanford Social Innovation Review: But, philanthropy, let’s remember, from the Greek, is “love of humanity.” Love is central to philanthropy, by definition. It should be central. That doesn’t …
This item is cross-posted from www.Post2015.org. -ed. If the history of the data revolution were written today, it would include three major dates. May 2013, when the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda first coined the phrase “data revolution.” November 2014, when the UN Secretary-General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group (IEAG) set a vision for it. And …
No economic policy is gender-neutral. The first time I heard that, at the London School of Economics, it came as a complete shock to me—the kind of eye-opener you only get when something so obviously true is pointed out to you for the first time. All policies, whether economic or social, have differing impacts on …
Fact-checking is everywhere, but does it have any impact? This was one of my biggest questions coming out of an American Press Institute (API) conference I attended in Washington this past January. The growth of fact-checking is indisputable: The number of fact-checking stories – from groups like Factcheck, FactChecker (home of the “Pinocchios”), and Politifact—increased by more than 50% between 2004 and 2008. From 2008 …
A woman smiles during a visit from a Marie Stopes International mobile clincial outreach team in Laniar, Senegal. (Photo Credit: Jonathan Torgovnik/ Reportage by Getty Images, licensed under CC BY NC 4.0) We live in an increasingly visual world. A hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Over 20 billion photos …