NEW YORK, December 17, 2018 – The Institute of International Education (IIE), with generous support from Rise Up, is conducting an evaluation of Rise Up programming on approximately 500 participants from the United States, Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. Rise Up, a nonprofit based at the Public Health Institute (PHI) in Oakland, CA, activates women and girls to transform their lives, families, and communities for a more just and equitable world through investment in local solutions, strengthening leadership, and building movements.
Since 2009, Rise Up’s powerful network of over 500 leaders has directly benefited 7 million girls, youth, and women, advocating for over 100 laws and policies impacting 115 million people in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the United States. Rise Up enables girls and women to finish school, stay healthy, escape violence, overcome poverty, and raise their voices to create sustainable change.
Rise Up identifies emerging leaders, strengthens their leadership and the effectiveness of their organizations, and enables them to achieve local and national impacts by providing the funding, resources, networks, and support they need to achieve large scale and sustainable change. Its programmatic work focuses on ensuring the human rights of girls and women; ending gender-based violence and child marriage; improving sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice; and increasing economic empowerment and opportunity.
The evaluation is intended to provide a better understanding of how Rise Up’s model succeeds at instilling agency in women, girls, and their allies, and how it provides them with the tools to effect large scale social change. IIE will measure the skills participants gained and their advocacy achievements. In addition, IIE will look at how participants’ professional trajectories have been impacted by the program, and how they changed their approach to working with women and girls.
“Rise Up is deeply committed to investing in the vision, leadership, and solutions of local leaders,” said Denise Dunning, Rise Up Founder and Executive Director. “Beginning with a focus on individual leadership development, Rise Up fosters exponential change by enabling local leaders to strengthen their organizations, lead change in their communities, and advance national level impact through improved laws, programs, and funding for women and girls.”
For over 70 years, IIE has conducted research on education issues and evaluated the impact of global scholarship, fellowship and development programs, including programs focused on women and girls in underserved communities. The evaluation is conducted by IIE’s Research, Evaluation and Learning (REL) team, which is committed to furthering key research and new knowledge in international education, and measuring the impact of education initiatives through comprehensive evaluation.
“Our research sheds light on the transformational impact that education initiatives have on individuals and their communities,” said Mirka Martel, Head of REL at IIE. “By measuring Rise Up’s impact on social advocacy and justice, we gain a better understanding of how to advance their mission supporting female leaders worldwide.”
IIE administers and conducts evaluations of numerous global programs and initiatives, many of which are either wholly or partially dedicated to empowering female leaders and breaking down the barriers to higher education that women and girls have historically faced. The Institute also supports the Higher Education Readiness (HER) program in Ethiopia, which provides girls in the 11th grade with scholarship support to help them complete their secondary education and equip them with the tools needed to continue on to university. To evaluate the potential effect of the HER pilot program on high school girls’ personal development and educational achievement, as well as family and community attitudes toward girls’ education, IIE ran a longitudinal quasi-experimental study that concluded in 2016.
The Rise Up evaluation will be finalized in spring 2019, and a final report will be available in April 2019. IIE is at the forefront of measuring the long-term impact of international scholarship and capacity-building programs focused on education and development. REL conducts evaluations and impact studies approaching impact in a holistic way, understanding the outcomes of key interventions on beneficiaries, communities, and policy and programming.
About IIE
IIE works to build more peaceful and equitable societies by advancing scholarship, building economies and promoting access to opportunity. As a not-for-profit with 18 offices and affiliates worldwide, IIE collaborates with a range of corporate, government and foundation partners across the globe to design and manage scholarship, study abroad, workforce training and leadership development programs. For more information visit www.iie.org.
About Rise Up
Rise Up activates women and girls to transform their lives, families and communities through investment in local solutions, strengthening leadership, and building movements. Since 2009, Rise Up’s powerful network of over 500 leaders has directly benefited 7 million girls, youth, and women, advocating for over 100 laws and policies impacting 115 million people in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the US. Rise Up is based at the Public Health Institute (PHI), a leader in global health and development for over 50 years. For more information visit www.riseuptogether.org.
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