On July 6th in Manila, IPA and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (with support from the Citi Foundation) co-hosted a workshop for 40 high- and mid-level policymakers and financial service providers interested in learning how rigorous evidence can help them better serve their customers.During the one-day event, attendees engaged in a series of discussions that encouraged them to think about how recent financial inclusion evidence applies to their institutions and how RCTs can be useful for decision-making.

Innovations for Poverty Action organized a Stakeholders’ forum focusing on sharing learnings from the Soapy Water Handwashing Stations pilot study.The forum was organized within IPA’s strategic objective to organically inform policy and programming with rigorous research findings.The focus of this forum was to: present results from the Soapy Water Handwashing Stations (SWHWS) willingness to pay and school pilot studies, and to share the next steps and scale up plans of the study.The key areas addressed by this pilot study include; the feasibility, durability, and community acceptance of the SWHWS PovuPoa handwashing stations.

The Evidence-based Policy-making in Education conference began on June 23.This 2-day event was hosted by the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) and coordinated by Twaweza and Innovations for Poverty Action-Tanzania.