The World as Classroom
The idea gurus at TED have just released an online portal for educators—and for the student in all of us: TED-Ed. Teachers from around the world are invited to submit short lessons, and those selected are paired up with animators to produce pithy,
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May 04 2012
Apr 27 2012
Creating and Measuring Interim Policy Objectives
The APEP team will be doing a webinar for Independent Sector on May 3rd at 2PM EST on defining and tracking meaningful benchmarks for progress on policy change. We will show how our Advocacy Progress Planner can help funders, advocates and other
Apr 20 2012
Save The Date: Advocacy Evaluation Breakfast on May 8th, 8:15-9:45AM
It’s morning. You’re hungry. And under-caffeinated. You think: “whatever happened to APEP’s advocacy evaluation breakfasts?” Don’t despair: on May 8th, we’re back and better than ever with a presentation on Alliance for Justice’s (AFJ) new
Apr 13 2012
Sharing Lessons Learned
At the end of last month, The Aspen Institute’s Ministerial Leadership Initiative (MLI) closed shop after more than four years of fruitful work with health ministers from around the developing world. The program aimed to promote more effective policies
Apr 06 2012
Gross National Happiness?
The Washington Post’s recent piece on happiness raises an important question: how do we measure something as subjective as personal “happiness”? For advocacy evaluators, this may seem eerily familiar: it’s what we do – attempt to define meaningful
Mar 30 2012
From Laughs to Advocacy
The Better World Campaign could have gotten all indignant about this Daily Show piece. Instead, they are using Jon Stewart’s popularity to their advantage. Smart. The head of a state association of park and recreation managers said some members
Mar 23 2012
Unpacking Stats
A few weeks ago we told you about a World Bank report showing a marked decrease in the number of people in developing countries living in extreme poverty. In their latest “Trade Fact of the Week,” our friends at the GlobalWorks Foundation
Mar 16 2012
Mass Advocacy and Controversy
Invisible Children’s Kony2012—a 30-minute YouTube video—has gone famously “viral,” garnering more than 70 million views in a week, with numbers still growing. Yet, criticism is growing almost as fast: long-time advocates in Uganda
Mar 09 2012
Extreme Poverty Down?
According to a recent report by the World Bank, the answer is (unexpectedly) an emphatic yes. Researchers found that the number of people in the developing world living on $1.25 per day or less actually decreased
Mar 02 2012
Evaluating Talk
Two weeks ago, we featured the Huffington Post piece of an Aspen Institute colleague arguing for the value of talk. Coincidentally, The New Yorker recently asked: so, what really happens at the World Economic Forum? Nick Paumgarten answers by describing
