“So What?” – Your Weekly Guide to Advocacy With Impact
Lovingly selected and lightly snarked by Team APEP: David Devlin-Foltz, Susanna Dilliplane, and Christine Ferris
Oops! Last week we accidentally sent out the wrong So What, serving you the same items as the week
Stats speak English – yay!
Stephanie Evergreen has helped many evaluators present more effectively at AEA conferences. (Yes, that can include interpretive dance but APEP does not recommend this.) But them’s who choose to present stats should catch this: great tips for helping you speak statistical truth to English majors. (APEP’s resident Professional English Major finds statistics “soooooo reductive.”)
The Gift of Doubt
APEP has had the privilege of working with some brilliant advocates in the global North and South for social change and economic development. And learning from skeptics. But in recent years emphasis on design thinking, shrinking aid from big countries, perhaps a little welcome humility from the development industry, decentralization of power and growing local advocacy within many poor countries may all be shifting the focus towards more localized development solutions. Here: Oxfam GB’s Duncan Green says it better. But he’s right: let’s come up with a better handle than Development 2.0.
Last call, gentlepeople, last call
We sit here by the phone and nobody calls. Fine. Well, OK – some of you have responded to our call for feedback on So What? And we thank you each individually because, well, you are few and we are grateful. Overwhelm us with rotten tomatoes while you can and help us evaluate whether our weekly is helpful, interesting, and relevant to our readers. What topics or types of information catch your eye? What would you like more of? Less of? Please send your answer to: SoWhat.blog@aspeninstitute.org. We’ll be featuring some of your comments in this very space, along with some quantitative analysis of our reader response.
The Aspen Planning and Evaluation Program helps leading foundations and nonprofit organizations plan, assess and learn from their efforts to promote changes in knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and policies in the US and internationally. To learn more about our tools and services, visit http://www.aspeninstitute.org/apep
