Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - Learning & Innovation
Purpose:
The Emergency Response team aims to reduce suffering, disease, and death in countries affected by natural disasters and complex emergencies. The Learning and Innovation (L&I) team collaborates with other foundation programs to develop and study new approaches to disaster assistance, including innovative tools and technologies, processes, and systems change. Sankofa partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Emergency Response Team to conduct a retrospective analysis on investments tested in crises affected regions. Sankofa has ensured grantees in resource-poor regions have the technical support to test low-cost, high-impact solutions to overcome the barriers to create innovation in the humanitarian sector. Sankofa has also provided continual technical support to grantees and their MEL systems as they have been implemented.
Collaborations:
Supported grantees in facilitating a retrospective reflection on learnings, focusing how innovation was part of the project, what enabled the success of the innovation, what barriers were faced in implementation, and key learnings to apply to future projects.
Conducted a retrospective analysis on investments across the portfolio of investments through desk reviews, conversations with the team, and key informant interviews with grantees and partners.
Conducted an analysis of the innovator’s processes to determine enablers for grantees and the value the innovation had value within the sector.
Analyzed the relationship between the foundation and grantees for projects being supported by the foundation. The goal being to identify what can be done differently moving forward, what accommodations are necessary, and how they can best ensure grantees are set up for success in future projects.
Supported the hiring of local evaluators for each grantee to increase local capacity of MEL experts to lead evaluation efforts.
Final Deliverables:
Developed written and visual summaries per investment project of lessons learned in enablers, barriers, process and effectiveness
Created a cross-cutting analysis across all investments in EMR L&I Portfolio and recommendations for internal EMR
Technical support to grantees
