Emily Gustafsson-Wright, a experienced researcher of The Brookings Institution focused on economical topics like global education, health, early childhood development, impact evaluations, innovative finance, and Social and Development Impact Bonds, wrote this article where she explores the impact of the pandemic on social services that are funded through Impact Bonds. She mentions the Village Enterprise project in Kenya and Uganda, that was structured by Instiglio, and had to postpone the evaluation stage because of the COVID-19. Doug Emeott, Manager at Instiglio, helped Emily gather insights of this project.
Other members of the impact bond community contributed. A total of 20 impact bond projects across five sectors and across geographies (Australia, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, India, Kenya, Portugal, South Africa, Uganda, United Kingdom, and United States) were surveyed to gain insight into these questions at this stage of the pandemic.
She makes great analysis of the main problems these projects are having due COVID-19. One of the most critical is the struggle organizations have monitoring and evaluating the performance and the outcome achievement of their projects. She ends the article with hope of a better future:
I believe that there is an opportunity to capture lessons from the COVID-19 crisis in the coming years to explore how the projects and beneficiaries receiving funding via impact bonds fare in the face of crises. This could help to inform how outcome-based financed and even traditionally funded projects could be more resilient to future shocks.
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