Childhood friends find new vocations in southern Ethiopia

Five rural university graduates without work build a thriving welding business in just two months.

The $4.3 million Resilience in Pastoral Areas (RIPA) project offers farming communities alternative income sources by boosting livestock and crop production and providing technical and vocational training, including skills like welding.

gLOCAL Evaluation Week 2024

iDE’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning team shares insights and learnings with a diverse global community

Over the course of a week, members of iDE’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning team shared insights and learnings with participants joining from around the world during gLOCAL Evaluation Week 2024, hosted by Global Evaluation Initiative.

iDE Cambodia WASH Publications

The resources below were developed through multiple partnerships. We're making them accessible here in the spirit of knowledge sharing and toward fostering collaborative approaches to various SDGs.

Sharing resources for a better way forward

Sylhet’s Resilient Market Ecosystem

Bangladeshi Region Characterized by Sufi Shrines and a Changing Climate

This Sylhet market ecosystem map shows the location of more than 2,360 iDE-powered touchpoints – local business advisors, livestock service providers, agricultural collection points, sales agents, entrepreneurs and latrine producers – all engaging with market actors, communities, and individuals – spread across Sylhet.

Microloans Help Zambian Farmers Cover Their Nuts

iDE Works With Communities To Establish Catalytic Savings And Loans Groups

Tryness Nsofwa, 57, proudly inspects her field of groundnuts. She uproots a clump of pods from the damp, red earth and is pleased with what she sees. Cracking open a husk to reveal edible fruit inside, Tryness notes the nuts are well formed and plentiful. “It’s looking very nice,” she says of her crop. “I will keep some for my family and I will sell some.”

Young pastoralists expand business

Eager entrepreneurs want to work but are unaware of or unequipped for job opportunities

While both men and women in the lowlands of Ethiopia have increased their engagement in local markets, they often lack access, agency, and commercial scale.

Transitioning out of Pastoralism

Nomadic communities in the southern lowlands of Ethiopia diversify their income

Pastoralist communities can no longer rely on traditional livestock and agriculture for high-quality, nutritious food production and consistent income generation.

Students seek solutions for food preservation

Design students from the Colorado School of Mines develop context-oriented technology to strengthen the post-harvest value chain in rural Mozambique

iDE works with university partners to explore technologies that promise to increase market options for fruit and vegetable farmers.

Learn by doing

iDE immerses Global Good engineers in design thinking

Tailoring existing HCD curriculum to current in-country, contextual challenges the immersion course will provide participants with real-life applications to the Human-Centered Design methodology.

Design for developing countries

Establishing a methodology for Human-Centered Design in a challenging context

In 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded a collaboration that combined experience and wisdom of designers and field staff that eventually coalesced into the HCD Toolkit, a methodology specifically for organizations working with poor communities to create products that are feasible, desirable, and viable.

Diving in deep

Gathering insights on sanitation from rural Ghana

Part of iDE's Human-Centered Design process is called a Deep Dive, wherein team members gather insights from stakeholders on their current behaviors, needs, and opportunities.

A system solution for sanitation

Building a winning team of donors in Bangladesh

By using a portfolio approach, iDE demonstrates and delivers effective solutions that meet the goals of multiple partners and stakeholders, such as improved sanitary latrine coverage in populous Bangladesh.

Clean hands, better lives

Designing handwashing solutions

The biggest barrier to handwashing is not always the availability of water or soap, but rather knowledge. Making the connection between dirty hands and disease is the first step.

Design for humans by humans

Farmers are more likely to invest their money in a solution that comes from their own ideas, and from their true aspirations. iDE uses Human Centered Design to engage with the market to reveal those needs and desires to design solutions that people want to buy and entrepreneurs want to sell. Those solutions are more likely to be sustainable and cost-effective, too.

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