Two big announcements: the 2025 School for Thinktankers and the Semana de la Evidencia 2024

I am off for a short break.

Before I go I want to leave you with a couple of big announcements from the OTT team.

The 2025 School for Thinktankers

Registration for the 2025 School for Thinktankers is coming out soon. If you want to get early dips into the application process then register your interest here.

The School is moving to Barcelona, to Fundació Bofill . They hosted the 2024 OTT Conference.

The OTT team has been busy preparing a new programme to make sure this is the best School ever. Find out more here:

Semana de la Evidencia 2024

La Semana de la Evidencia (of Evidence Week) is festival of events (of all kinds) to promote a discussion on the generation, communication and use of evidence on matters of public interest in Latin America and the Caribbean.

On Think Tanks and a group of Peruvian evidence informed policy entrepreneurs founded it back in 2016. A couple of years ago we joined forces with the Hub de Evidencias de Latinoamérica y del Caribe - Hub LAC led by Instituto Veredas to ensure its sustainability.

La Semana has hosted more than 200 events in over 21 countries. And this year promises to be even better!

Find out more here.

In Spanish:

La Semana de la Evidencia es un festival de eventos (de todo tipo) para promover una discusión sobre la generación, comunicación y uso de evidencias en cuestiones de interés público en América Latina y el Caribe.

On Think Tanks y un grupo de emprendedores peruanos de políticas informadas por evidencias la fundaron en 2016. Hace un par de a?os, unimos fuerzas con el Hub de Evidencias de Latinoamérica y del Caribe - Hub LAC, liderado por el Instituto Veredas, para asegurar su sostenibilidad.

La Semana ha organizado más de 200 eventos en más de 21 países. ?Y este a?o promete ser aún mejor!

Descubre más aquí.

In Portuguese:

A Semana de la Evidencia é um festival de eventos (de todos os tipos) para promover uma discuss?o sobre a gera??o, comunica??o e uso de evidências em quest?es de interesse público na América Latina e no Caribe.

On Think Tanks e um grupo de empreendedores peruanos de políticas informadas por evidências a fundaram em 2016. Há alguns anos, unimos for?as com o Hub de Evidências de Latinoamérica y del Caribe - Hub LAC, liderado pelo Instituto Veredas, para garantir sua sustentabilidade.

A Semana de la Evidencia já organizou mais de 200 eventos em mais de 21 países. E este ano promete ser ainda melhor!

Saiba mais aqui.

Other news from OTT/On Think Tanks

Policy analysis

Here is something few think tanks do: review the text of new legislation and point out what is wrong. You'd think they would but they don't. This is a good example from CAPPES - Centro para el análisis de políticas públicas de educación superior - which also landed them a feature on La Encerrona Marco Sifuentes

TAI Learning Days

At the same time as the OTT Conference was underway, the Trust, Accountability and Inclusion Collaborative was planning its Learning Days in Mexico. Here is their recap:

Local agendas

I found this post (would love to read the full presentation) on Profession Kwame Akyeampong on taking control of the research agenda very interesting. This is a critical issue. I have often argues that, in the end, this is what matters.

Yes, the money can come from abroad; yes the money can be managed by a foreign based NGO; yes the money can be saved in the foreign bank account; etc... All of this can respond to the legal and organisational constraints that research funders face.

But what should not happen is that the agenda - the questions asked, the methods used, the audiences targeted, the outputs produced, etc. - is decided abroad.

Having said, that, money, of course, has a lot to say about why it is so hard for local researchers in the Global South to control their agendas. (See my comment in the post below).

What matters to Africans (Latinamericans, Asians, anyone really)?

This is a great article by Ken Opalo . The importance about local agendas is not only just a matter of research justice. One of the most important roles of think tanks and policy researchers (and social scientists more generally) is to help us (the rest of society) understand what is going on in our communities.

What is brewing among young people; what bonds are strengthening and which are breaking down; how are our views on the world changing; what do we care about; etc.

This is from an article I am writing on North-South think tank partnerships:

"Right now there are more people googling about Pad Thai in Bolivia than about the SDGs”. I love this phrase by Werner Hernani from Fundación ARU at the TTI Knowledge Exchange in Bangkok. With it he summed up the huge divide that exists between what matters to the international development community and to domestic policy communities.

Ken Opalo's articles about Africa, like the articles, essays and books I read about and from Latin American social scientists, are refreshingly written for a local audience that 'knows' what is going on and has no appetite for jargon or international development correctness.

New fund for green transformation

The Open Society Foundations has launched its new opportunity on Economic and Climate Prosperity. This is the result of the transformation that OSF went through over the last 2 years. More opportunities will launch their strategies soon: for Latin America, Africa and Europe, as well as other mission focused ones.

At the same time, OSF is also investing in long term partners who can deliver long term returns. This patient capital, combined with the more opportunistic nature of opportunities like the Economic and Climate Prosperity programme illustrates a move towards an increasingly strategic approach for funders.

Other news from our community

Better informed parliaments

OTT's Racheal Makokha published a case study from an ongoing project with African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA) on improving the use of evidence in the Parliament of Ghana:

Thorny issues

I have been writing about corruption, perverse political agreements and state capture for a long time. I argue that unless we address these issues (and others) we should not expect much from evidence informed policy interventions. Vanesa Weyrauch and I co-authored this article inviting to a conversation:

Are think tanks influential?

Not as much as they say they are. In this article I argue that successful think tanks are more useful than influential. This rather subtle difference can change how we think about planning for and monitoring and evaluating think tanks.

I am away for a break.

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All the best

Quique