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Why We Shut Down


In international development, it’s not enough to try to do good. We need the tools to tell if a project is really working — and the incentive to end it if it’s not.

A few weeks ahead of the pilot, Ben visited the bustling CWC clinic at Savelugu Hospital as part of a “proof of concept” project we conducted to refine our programming model. When we looked at a follow-up to one of the largest and ostensibly most successful studies on postpartum family planning — the Yam Daabo intervention in Burkina Faso — Sarah noticed something we had previously missed. Without an impact on pregnancy risk, programs promoting contraceptive uptake provide no real benefit — and crucially, assuming limited developing resources, are an ineffective use of time, money, and effort.

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