IPA has been hard at work with preparations for the launch of the Proven Impact Initiative, an agenda designed to promote, finance, strengthen, and expand anti-poverty ideas that have been proven to work through rigorous experimentation.   Louis Gilbert, a Yale junior, provides us with the latest on Yale’s newest student organization, the Proven Impact Club:

Friday October 6^th 2010 marked the official launch of the Proven Impact Club (PIC) at Yale University.  Speaking to an audience of more than fifty Yale students, Dean Karlan, Professor of Economics at Yale and president and founder of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), discussed IPA’s central mission and emphasized the importance of proving what works in poverty alleviation. Paloma Pineda and Jim Berry, both juniors at Yale, also spoke on their experiences working for IPA in Ghana this past summer and what they hope to accomplish with the introduction of the PIC.

Over its first semester, Yale’s Proven Impact Club will organize a speaker series featuring the latest discoveries in poverty alleviation, hold economics and skills development workshops for students, fundraise for the Proven Impact Fund, and contribute to the Proven Impact research agenda.  The PIC also plans to stretch beyond the Yale community with a student volunteer program to teach internationally-focused lessons on poverty challenges and solutions at local public schools. The club also wants to tap into existing student social networks to assist in establishing partner clubs at other universities.

Following the kickoff event, the PIC received more than thirty applications for membership.  The club held its first official meeting yesterday and will begin to set up specific task forces in the upcoming week.  Yale is replete with students passionate towards development and poverty alleviation.  Working together with IPA, the Proven Impact Club will provide a new outlet for this enthusiasm, guiding it towards methods that have been proven to work.

For more information or if you are interested in setting up a club at your college, get in touch with Nicole Mauriello at IPA (nmauriello at poverty-action.org)