For this project in 2011, I worked with the International Budget Partnership, as part of Innovations for Scaling Impact, to identify and develop an appropriate communications platform to build and support a broad-based, cross-sector civil society movement around budget transparency for the effective collaboration and exchange of information.
The Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) is a multi-stakeholder action network working to advance and institutionalize global norms and significant, continuous improvements on fiscal transparency, participation, and accountability in countries around the world. I started working on GIFT as part of Innovations for Scaling Impact in 2011, and in early 2014 became an independent consultant on GIFT, contracted through the International Budget Partnership, who is acting as the fiduciary host of GIFT, managing funds from the World Bank to support GIFT. GIFT has also received funding from the Hewlett Foundation, Omidyar Network, and Metanoia Fund.
For GIFT, I was project manager, served on the coordination team, and helped facilitate the New Technologies and Open Data working group.
I, as part of Innovations for Scaling Impact in 2011, assisted the MasterCard Foundation in gaining a better understanding of the ecosystem of actors engaged in two of the Foundation's focus areas. I used a network analysis approach, web crawls in particular, to produce a network map of organizations and accompanying description for Foundation staff to then interrogate and feed into strategy decisions.
Debate training for young people, ages 18-25, started in 2011, and in 2014 the British Council and other donors such as the Anna Lindh Foundation instigated a strategic review of the program outcomes. As part of this review effort, Info Steward, as the Lead Researcher, and colleagues engaged stakeholders in a field visit to Tunisia, interviews, and surveys in order to provide an evaluation and recommendation for the steering committee. The review work lasted from March - July 2014. The Young Arab Voices program develops skills and opportunities for youth-led debate across the Arab region and provides opportunities, tools, and capacity building for the involvement of youth in the running and managing of effective debates for the purpose of enriching the pluralistic democratic dialog in the Arab world.
