Integrity Summit 2017: What Can We Learn from Integrity Idols in Nepal?

Background In January 2017, the Accountability Lab brought together the three winners of the Integrity Idol Nepal competition since 2014 (Gyan Mani Nepal, Pradip Raj Kanel and Dor Bikram Shrees), along with other Integrity Idol finalists (including Bindu Kunwar, Tara Subedi, Bhishma Kumar Bhusal, Krishna Prasad Danchha, Bhuwan Kumari Rai, and Ram Narayan Shah), experts in anti-corruption and governance (including Suryanath Upadhyay the former head of the CIAA, Dr. Tarak Bahadur KC the Deputy Executive Director of Nepal Administrative Staff College, Bharat Bahadur Thapa the Head of Transparency International and Jiwan Prabha Lama the former Secretary of the Nepali Government, [...]

2017-01-23T00:00:00+00:0023rd January 2017|

How A Weekend on Wasan Island Helped Us Learn, Improve and Strategize

By: Blair Glencorse, Executive Director of the Accountability Lab and a winner of the BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Award.  This summer, the BMW Foundation kindly convened a group of activists, thinkers, practitioners and policy-makers on Wasan Island in Canada for an Impact Weekend on behalf of the Accountability Lab (photos here). The retreat was transformational- as a young, growing organization often overwhelmed with day-to-day activities, it provided the perfect space for all of us at the Lab to rethink and strategize. It was also well-timed- a period of reflection after four years of our work to build accountability in countries like [...]

2016-11-16T00:00:00+00:0016th November 2016|

Communicating Impact: How Do We Tell Better Feedback Stories?

By: Anne Sophie Ranjbar, Associate Director of Accountability Lab As a small organization tackling the seemingly abstract issue of accountability, we’ve learned the great power of storytelling. We were excited to lead a “LabStorm” on how storytelling can be used to strengthen feedback loops at the annual Feedback Summit last week. Here’s what we asked and what we learned: Why is it important to communicate about our feedback loops? Feedback loops are at the heart of accountability systems. Fortunately, more and more organizations are recognizing the value of feedback (the number of attendees at the Feedback Summit doubled in size [...]

2016-11-07T00:00:00+00:007th November 2016|

Ignore Feedback Loops at Your Peril Evidence from Nepal

By: Narayan Adhikari, who runs the Accountability Lab in Nepal, and Pranav Budhathoki, Executive Director of Local Interventions Group. This blog post was originally published by Feedback Labs. In February 2016, almost a year after Nepal’s first devastating earthquake, government officials and 344 earthquake-affected Nepalis squatted on the grounds of a public school in the epicenter district of Gorkha. This was a community meeting organized by Accountability Lab and Local Interventions Group. The group collectively set out to solve a serious problem– there was not enough assistance to survive. The government showed no sense of urgency to speed up aid delivery. Citizens demanded [...]

2016-10-19T00:00:00+00:0019th October 2016|

Where are we with the learning agenda in Nepal?

By: Samita Thapa, Accountability Lab Resident in Nepal At Accountability Lab, learning is an important part of our work; we see our role as trying new approaches, testing new ideas and then sharing the learning from those efforts with the larger development community both in Nepal and beyond. Last month, we held a Learning Event at the OpenGov Hub Kathmandu to see how others were thinking about learning too and collectively share ideas about how we can all improve what we do. In Nepal, learning tends to refer to a theatre-style, one-way communication through which one party teaches and the [...]

2016-09-30T00:00:00+00:0030th September 2016|

One year working to close the feedback loop

By: Sara Rodriguez, Accountability Lab Resident in Nepal One year after I joined the Mobile Citizens Helpdesk (MCHD) team and one and a half years after two massive earthquakes changed the lives of thousands of Nepalis, I visited two of the fourteen districts MCHD works within, Kavre and Sindhupalchowk. Sadly, the scene hasn't changed much since the disaster. Mountains of rubble, temporary shelters made of CGI sheets and wood, and poor communal toilets still dot the landscape in these districts that were among the hardest hit and where we’ve worked since June 2015. While the rebuilding process is indeed slow, the [...]

2016-09-22T00:00:00+00:0022nd September 2016|

They came for the music and left with the message

By: Heather Gilberds On Saturday, September 10th, Accountability Lab Liberia’s work attracted hundreds of young people to a town hall in Kakata, the capital city of Margibi county, where they gathered to listen to the latest songs from their favorite Hip Co artists. Hip Co music is uniquely Liberian—a form of hip hop that emerged in the 1980's but gained popularity among youth in post-war Liberia. Hip Co artists rap in “Colloqua”, the colloquial form of Liberian English, and the songs have a political bent, describing social ills, lamenting the causes of poverty, or calling out corrupt politicians and public [...]

2016-09-19T00:00:00+00:0019th September 2016|

An Impact Weekend with the BMW Foundation

Achieving Something Special at a Wilderness Retreat By: Narayan Adhikari, Nepal Country Representative for Accountability Lab Recently, the BMW Foundation convened a group on Wasan Island in Canada- a beautiful retreat in the Muskoka lakes about three hours north of Toronto. It was a perfect, remote location to disconnect and discuss the Accountability Lab. I was honored to be invited along, and packed my bags in Nepal for the trip, which I knew was going to be full of deep thinking, critical reflection and new friends. Arriving on the island, it was more beautiful than I had imagined- lakes as far [...]

2016-08-23T00:00:00+00:0023rd August 2016|

Where Are We With The Learning Agenda In Liberia?

By: Beth Goldberg and Lawrence Yealue (Accountability Lab Liberia) At the Accountability Lab we have recently been running a series of “learning about learning” discussions to understand how we- as a community- can get better at adaptive learning. We want to help highlight practical ways to internalize and build on lessons around what works and what does not; and to support open conversations around impact (read recent blogs from our impact survey process and learning in Pakistan). In Monrovia last week, we brought together a group of donors, civil society representatives and government officials to discuss these issues. In Liberia, [...]

2016-07-06T00:00:00+00:006th July 2016|

Where Are We With The Learning Agenda In Pakistan?

By: Fayyaz Yaseen, Accountability Lab Pakistan Country Representative.   Building accountability in Pakistan is a difficult, long, and non-linear process. It is highly political and requires a deep understanding of the context, relationships, and incentives. With this kind of work, adaptive learning (learning that leads to real change) is essential. Too often organizations fail to internalize lessons from experience to iterate and improve. Last month at Accountability Lab Pakistan we brought together a group of representatives from Pakistani civil society, academia, media, and donor organizations to discuss how organizations can work to integrate adaptive learning to improve their work for [...]

2016-06-27T00:00:00+00:0027th June 2016|
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