Four summer MEL Fellows will travel to Kenya, India, and Uganda to work with D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellows and D-Lab Innovation Ecosystem Builder Fellows.
D-Lab Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Manager Laura Budzyna has recruited four summer fellows, Tom DeMaio, Rachita Mehrotra, Jieun Park, and Erika Desmond. The Fellows will travel to Kenya, India, and Uganda to work with D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellows and D-Lab Innovation Ecosystem Builder Fellows. Tom, Rachita, and Jieun are all students in the MPA in Development Practice program at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs. Erika co-chairs the Boston+Acumen chapter. Read on to find out more about their summer work!
Jieun Park – Essmart, Bangalore, India
Jieun will head to Bangalore to work with 2016 D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellowship venture Essmart to help them measure both their direct impact on shopkeepers and their indirect impact on end users. She will refine and implement a way to assess shopkeeper income levels before and after their engagement with Essmart. She will also work on building out assumptions to calculate the impact of Essmart's new agricultural products on end customers.
Erika Desmond – BrightGreen Renewable Energy, Nairobi, Kenya
Erika will travel to Nairobi to work with 2017 D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellowship venture BrightGreen Renewable Energy to kickstart their impact measurement strategy. She will help the BrightGreen team build a theory of change and a set of impact metrics that will allow them to benchmark performance against others in the clean energy sector. She will also pilot strategies to begin collecting data from the microentrepreneurs who sell BrightGreen's charcoal briquettes.
Tom DeMaio – Social Innovation Academy & Kyusa, Kampala, Uganda
Tom will travel to Kampala to provide monitoring and evaluation support to D-Lab Innovation Ecosystem Builder fellows at Social Innovation Academy and Kyusa as they pilot new initiatives to help marginalized youth become successful social entrepreneurs. He will help each organization define the metrics and milestones that point to entrepreneurs’ future success, and he will design and test new tools to collect that information.
Rachita Mehrotra – Capria Venture Basecamp, Delhi, India & Teach for India InnovatED, Bangalore, India
Rachita will be heading to Delhi and Bangalore, India to work with D-Lab Innovation Ecosystem Builder Fellows at Capria VentureBasecamp and Teach for India InnovatED. Rachita will help both organizations develop impact measurement strategies as they welcome new cohorts of entrepreneurs and incubators this summer. As each organization tests out new content and delivery mechanisms, Rachita will help them to assess the entrepreneurs’ learning, takeaways, and milestones.
In addition to their MEL work, alll four fellows will write teaching cases chronicling a challenge faced by the organization(s) they work with. These case studies will be shared publicly and used in D-Lab classes!