Effective Intervention
Rigorously measured projects to improve children's education and save lives in some of the poorest regions of the world.
What We Do.
At Effective Intervention we aim to help children living in extreme poverty benefit from the rapidly growing world around them. We manage projects aimed at improving child survival, and raising education outcomes, in some of the poorest regions of India, Guinea-Bissau and Gambia.
We're well aware that, on a global scale, foreign aid spending has proven largely ineffective. Too often donors believe they are helping, when in fact they have accomplished little. In order to be sure our clients (children and their families) can benefit from our projects, we rigorously measure outcomes, using the highest statistical standards feasible.
Our combined STRIPES and CHAMPION trial illustrated that, for roughly $2,500 per village, it was possible to reduce neonatal child deaths by one quarter, and raise children’s educational outcomes by 25 percentile in a rural region of India.
We've had failures too. After 2.5 years of interventions, our EPICS trial, which provided first-line community based treatments to children in rural Guinea-Bissau, failed to show any reduction in child deaths compared to control villages. It was only because of our careful, rigorous determination to measure outcomes that we learned this project did not succeed.
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Recent Findings
We aim to help improve children's lives through providing better health, numeracy and literacy, as a package of care. Many of our aid projects are designed as randomised controlled trials in order that we can confidently measure outcomes.
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Current Projects
When we start a new project, we generally prefer to design it as a randomised controlled trial. This permits us to measure outcomes rigorously, and truly learn whether we are serving our clients (children and their familes) well enough, and at what cost. If we demonstrate succes, we expand projects, but if we fail we go back to the drawing board.
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Our Partners
We work closely with implementing agencies as well as academic institutions. The Centre for Economic Performance, at the London School of Economics, has supported and hosted our work for many years.