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An evaluation puzzle: “Mobile first”

Oxfam fixes the mobile network in the whole country, and Save the Children fixes the school.

The school couldn’t have been fixed without the mobile network.

No other agency had the ability to fix the mobile network.

In their report (using a universal standardised reporting format) Oxfam record this as “one school fixed”, arguing if our organisation hadn’t stepped in, the school wouldn’t have been built (counterfactual) but we did step in, and it was. Ergo, our organisation caused the fixing of the school. (And dozens of other schools, and everything else which could only be done because we fixed the network).

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Date
July 27, 2020
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An evaluation puzzle: “Many hands” In its report, CARE say they saved the villagers from being swept away in the flood. A critic argues, even if CARE hadn’t intervened