114 – International Impact Award 2024

[00:00:07] Lily: Hello, and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I’m Lily Clements, a Data Scientist, and I’m here with David Stern, a founding director of the award winning social enterprise, IDEMS International. Hi David. 

[00:00:18] David: Hi Lily. That’s new, isn’t it? 

[00:00:21] Lily: That is new. That’s a couple of days old now. Well, I’m not sure how old when this gets published.

[00:00:26] David: It will probably be next week, so it’ll be about a week old by the time this gets out. But yes you were at the award ceremony. I was not. I was on a plane coming back from Mali. And yeah, very exciting. 

[00:00:39] Lily: Absolutely, yeah, very exciting and a shame that it was the one that you missed. So this was the Social Enterprise UK Awards, and IDEMS International won the International Impact Award 2024.

[00:00:52] David: Yes, we’ve been shortlisted in different categories. We were shortlisted for Technology for Good, I believe it was one year, and again in the International Impact Award category another year. And to be recognised this year is particularly special, actually, because we’ve had a tough couple of years doing really good work, but it’s not been easy in IDEMS. And we feel the work that we’re doing is really important. So to have it recognised is really, it feels great. 

[00:01:21] Lily: I bet. It felt great for me, but I’m sure just as a whole for IDEMS, it’s a really nice moment. 

[00:01:29] David: It is a nice moment and it’s a nice moment to sort of take a little step back and appreciate actually the work that’s gone behind this. I think you might be aware, the piece of work which is really behind the award in terms of our big impactful achievement recently is related to the parenting work with Global Parenting Initiative and the results which are just coming out of these randomised control trials. I actually have a meeting on Monday to hear what’s happened in the randomised control trial of Parent Text.

But the thing which happened earlier in the year was we got the results from Parent App in Tanzania, and those results were just mind blowing. It’s such a privilege to be part of this project and to have built the technology which has actually led to this impact, which is, just to put it in perspective there are parenting programs called Parenting for Lifelong Health, which have been highly impactful, very evidence based, and we’ve been working to digitise them. And one program got digitised into an app, which has been trialled in Kenya now. And, it had results equivalent almost to the face to face intervention.

[00:02:43] Lily: Tanzania, not Kenya, right? 

[00:02:45] David: Oh, I’m sorry. Yes, it is Tanzania. And this work, sorry, the impact that it had is equivalent but at a fraction of the cost. You could now scale this at sort of 6 dollars a family potentially. And it’s reducing violence against children, it’s improving child mental health, adult mental health, a whole range of positive outcomes through an intervention which is scalable at potentially as little as 6 dollars a family. It’s wonderful to be part of such an exciting piece of work. 

[00:03:20] Lily: And to work alongside, I mean, from my perspective, to work alongside these experts at Oxford and elsewhere on getting out these ideas and just seeing how impactful it is, you know, the engagement levels of this, unheard of to me. At university as a statistics student or data science or whatever, you’re told, when you do a trial, usually you expect 50 percent of people to drop off more or less straight away. 

[00:03:48] David: Especially for digital interventions. And to get completion rates of over 90 percent was just… Now, again, there’s a lot of work that went to this. This didn’t happen by chance. This was work by a whole set of different people building the intervention in a way which actually resonated with the community with which it was tried and was very locally adapted. But even so, over 90 percent completion rate in a digital intervention is just unheard of, for me anyway. 

So, we should get back to in some sense our role in this is the role of the technology builder. So in some sense, we’ve not only built the technology for this intervention, we’ve built a way of building technology for interventions like this. And that’s what’s so exciting, that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s a real need to think about building technology differently for international impact. And that’s what we’ve been able to do through these interventions. We’ve actually started to build technology in a way that it’s now adaptable to different contexts, that we can actually have multiple deployments locally tailored through people engaging themselves in the adaptation process.

And we’re just getting started. So to get the recognition from this award, for other people to actually appreciate the value we’ve brought, has been, it really just feels great. Because mostly we’re behind the scenes. 

[00:05:20] Lily: Sorry, and to add, I know you, David, and maybe it’s probably been said, but in your head, you have kind of 10 year plans, 20, a very long term plan. In fact, probably to you, 10 years is short term. You’ve got all of these huge ideas of how we can build things out. We’ve only been working on these apps for was it three years? 

[00:05:40] David: I suppose it depends. The heart of the work is about three to four years now. And it started in 2020. But the ideas behind it, some things predate, and other things have come along the way. The understanding of how to start building these sorts of apps that’s probably two years old, really, since we really got into the heart of this. And it’s something where, as you say, in the long term plans, this is only a small piece of the puzzle. But even this small piece being impactful, you know, as impactful as it is, this is a sign of what we hope to come. If we can now get these things to start to work together as, the big vision is, then it really could change the way technology serves low resource communities. 

And the key is that this is not about us as a social enterprise. One of the things which is great is that this particular piece of work, we did a lot of it, but now we’re handing that over. It’s the team in Kenya, who do a lot of it, they’re working with a group in Uganda doing this. And so it’s not just about us, we’re collaborative by nature in so many different ways, not just with the partners, the academic partners, but also with the implementers on the ground, and as well as our partners on the ground, and actually building those connections.

So what’s really exciting to me isn’t just that, okay, we won this award, which is wonderful, it recognises our work, which is wonderful, but it also then hopefully will shine a spotlight on the work of our partners on the ground in Kenya, who are building the skills to do this themselves. 

That’s exciting. I mentioned I’ve come back from Mali. It was actually a trip to Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. And I’m at least as excited about what I saw there as I am about the award, which I’m really excited about. But there, we’ve got a team which is being built across Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, if anybody’s worked in those areas, they recognise these are really inspiring places but with really difficult challenges. 

And we’ve now got a little team emerging in each of those countries. The skills that they’re gaining, it’s taken time, but they’re really able to start engaging in projects in different ways and supporting others, our role is to support others almost always. And their role now, as our collaborators on the ground, is to support others in their context. And that’s growing so well.

So this isn’t about us being recognised. It is also about the fact that with us being recognised, those who are working with us, there is a spotlight which can be shone on them, and actually on that important support work which is often behind the scenes and normally we tend to find we’re underappreciated maybe, not by our partners but just by outside observers. So to be recognised like this is just wonderful. I’m pretty excited about it.

[00:08:57] Lily: And I just want to pick up on that underappreciated point. Because I know in the past from you that you, I want to say you don’t mind being underappreciated. You don’t need to be told like, oh, you’re doing a great job here, David. I might be wrong, but I guess, the point is, is having that appreciation then means that it can help us to build?

[00:09:18] David: No, you’re absolutely right. Normally I don’t mind being behind the scenes. I’m very happy to play second fiddle with the partners getting all the appreciation, but you know, over the last few years when everybody’s been squeezed, when you’re second fiddle, you get squeezed more.

[00:09:34] Lily: Sure. 

[00:09:35] David: So actually, the world’s gone through a very difficult few years with the economy, with everything else, and we’ve felt that. And it has meant that the role that we’re playing, which we believe is so important, and where we’re building these things, which we believe are really valuable, we haven’t been able to push forward quite as we would have hoped.

You mentioned the sort of big 10 year plans. Well, a lot of those have been on hold for the last two years, as we try to stabilise and build a good platform to move forward. Whereas, in many ways, we’re ready. We’re ready for that next phase, to really grow, to have more impact, to do more, to achieve more, to serve more.

And I don’t mind serving as second fiddle and being behind the scenes, but we can only do that if people actually can see and can understand the value that we’ve brought. And the truth is I’ve not been very good at sharing that. And let me be absolutely clear, this year’s application, it was other members of the team took the lead in putting us forward. And I didn’t contribute as much. I didn’t tell our story as much. 

But the stories are now so established within our team, we know what’s happening, people were able to put that together, and it’s been recognised. It feels really good to be seen. And we don’t always get that. And I don’t always want that. I’m very happy to be behind the scenes, supporting others most of the time. But just occasionally, it’s nice to pop your head up and actually to have an appreciation for the work that we’ve done, which I really am grateful to Social Enterprise UK for recognising and for valuing our work.

[00:11:25] Lily: Absolutely. And I just want to add as well this work that you said in Burkina, Faso, Niger and Mali, there’s just so much diversity at IDEMS that this is just a completely different area. I mean, the apps can feed into it, of course. The apps can be contextualised to work over there for a different reason, a different purpose, such as I assume with crops and farming or something, an app that’s needed over there. But that work is unrelated to this apps and chatbots work. 

[00:11:56] David: Be careful with the word unrelated.

[00:11:58] Lily: Okay. 

[00:11:58] David: Of course, as you say, in my head, there is a relationship between all of these. And you’re absolutely right. There is a project in Mali, who I promised that within two years, we’ll be able to bring the apps work into the work they’re doing, which is trying to build these systems for farmers to help manage their own farms and get the data on their farm and understand it and so on.

And so they’ve got a whole system using ODK and we’re trying to build some analytics for them and so on, but it’s all piecemeal. And so I’ve promised that within two years, we’ll try and have that using the technologies we’ve been building in the apps, because I know that serves. It’s just, we’ve not had that opportunity to bring that to bear because all of these take time and we’re stretched as it is.

And building more skills to be able to do this, as you’re aware, all of this takes the right people with the right skills, bringing those in, you know, we need the finances to do that and we don’t have a project to do that. A lot of what we’re doing is playing second fiddle. It’s supporting the projects that exist.

So in West Africa, our role is research method support. We’re supporting a whole collection of research projects in agroecology, working with farmer federations on the ground quite often. And that work’s been inspiring to me. And what’s been really inspiring recently is building the capacity of local counterparts to play the support role.

We now have an amazing team across Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali on the ground and they’re now at the stage where they’ve got enough skills to know that they’ve got a lot more to learn, but they can contribute already. They’re in a really good place, they still need our support and backstopping. They still need us to be coming in and building the capacity further to help them really go further. But they’re now able to be on the front line with the projects, helping them to analyse their data, to prepare their data collection tools to, you know, work in supporting research to happen well.

And so this is not so different if you want to what we’ve had in our other role of building the apps to enable the researchers to actually get their research findings to implementers so that they can implement at scale, but it is different. The connections are huge and the cross learning that’s possible is huge. That’s a lot of the role that we play. 

I guess, being able to focus on us at the moment, a big part of this is that as a team we don’t just bring the technical expertise, although that is our great strength. Our great strength is the depth of our technical expertise. But it is the fact that we’ve worked on the ground with partners for so long that we have this approach of whenever we can, we’re handing over. 

We’re taking on the hard task of often getting things started. But then if there’s a repetitive task, as quickly as possible, we’re aiming to say yeah, you can use us, but you don’t need to use us. Use our partners in Kenya. They can do that part really well. Use our partners in Ghana. Use the skills that we’ve built and the tools that we’re building, but let’s get the partners on the ground who are closer to you to actually be playing that immediate role of interaction, because they can do it better because they’re there. We can step in and support if it’s needed at a higher level. 

But if you want something here and now, you have teams who are local to you, who we can build the capacity to do this. The dream is to be collaborative in that way and to build others capacity to be able to support at scale all sorts of different projects which are happening all over the place using technology which is better adapted to social impact than some of the current technologies.

And I don’t want to go into details of that now, but that’s what was recognised in this award because of the work we’ve done supporting the PLH team, as part of the Global Parenting Initiative.

[00:16:30] Lily: PLH being Parenting. 

[00:16:31] David: For Lifelong Health, yes, sorry. Parenting for Lifelong Health as part of the Global Parenting Initiative. And to have that work recognised in this way, ah, it gives hope, that actually, it’s a long path, it’s a hard path, but we’re getting somewhere where, people are seeing the value. 

[00:16:52] Lily: Absolutely. And I don’t want to dare ask because I guess you’ve fed into it already, but because this is just the beginning, this is still in those, not even the beginning, we’re still setting up the app, and, with the team in Mali and Burkina Faso and Niger, everything’s still very much in its infancy compared to these incredibly ambitious plans that you’ve, I don’t know to what extent they’re mapped out in your head, but what’s next? 

[00:17:23] David: The hope is, and this is where the fact that yourself and Kate were there at the awards ceremony to receive this is rather appropriate, because the hope is that really what Kate is helping us to do, and I should be clear that Kate is our still relatively new director who’s joined Danny and myself as a director of IDEMS. What she brings is really this element of owning the fact that we are not just a, if you want, consultancy group or offering services, we are also building technology. And really to recognize that the way we’re building technology is different, this is something which we’re never going to go and look for venture capital for the technology to explode.

But we do want the technology to get out there, to be really useful and really usable in a slightly different way because we’re focusing on impact. And that element of being able to understand how to build technology, to focus on serving society, that’s going to need a different approach. And so really that next step for us is owning the whole that we are, which is we are, and we want to remain an organisation that works with partners solving real problems.

But we are also an organisation that builds new technology and that technology needs different approaches to build it so it can scale. And that’s the bit that I want us to really own and lead into. And this is where Kate’s taking us. And she’s, I’m so impressed. It was a meeting of minds in a way that I never really expected, because we’d always wanted a third director, Danny and I never felt that it should have been the two of us. And she was doing her own thing, and at the start, as is natural for me, I was trying to help her to do her own thing. 

And to have that flipped on me, and her to say, wait a second, what are you guys doing? And really understanding what we’re doing and why. That has never happened to me before. And now for her to be bringing her skills, to actually help us to say, okay, we need to tell these stories right. We need to actually get out there and help people to understand the big vision. But also the immediate opportunities of the technologies we can be building, the fact that these things take time, but if they are built they are meeting concrete needs which have been observed because of our work on the ground.

The startup culture is often about, young people having an idea and making it a reality. That’s not where we’re coming from. Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate the team of young people we have, like yourself and the others, who have lots of good ideas. But the heart of our work is coming from real experience on the ground, observing things which are needed in specific contexts, and understanding how those same things are needed in other contexts. And then using our skills as mathematicians to try and get to what is the underlying commonality and what is it that needs to be built that doesn’t exist, that would serve not one project, but across many.

And this comes back to what you were saying about the way that we are building the apps are not yet serving our work in West Africa. That’s disjoint, but it’s not totally disjoint because it will serve them and that need is there and it’s observed there, even though we don’t yet have the resources to build what they need, we are building with that in mind.

And that’s the real, that’s one of the differentiators with what we’re trying to do. We’re not trying to maximise for us. We’re trying to maximise the impact with what we have. And this is a different thing.

[00:21:32] Lily: Thank you very much, David. Really interesting discussion and really interesting to speak to you and, really great to be a part of IDEMS and just to hear about these kind of impressive things that IDEMS are doing and to know that you’re a very small part of that, it’s a wonderful feeling. 

[00:21:49] David: To say you’re a small part of it is, I think, not correct now, because you’ve become really a central pillar to a lot of what we’re doing. If you think about the different projects, you’re one of the few people who’s actually, because of your wide interest, jumping between them. You’ve done little bits with the agroecology team as well as doing bits on climate and little bits, well done large bits on the parenting, and so on. 

[00:22:14] Lily: But then this is part of how IDEMS operates, you come across someone like Lucie who’s working on the agroecology side, or Esmee who’s working with the apps, and they get a lot of depth, I assume, because that’s what they want to do, or they enjoy getting that depth and getting really stuck into this one thing. I know that they work on more things than just one thing but in particular, having their time on this one thing and really building that depth. Whereas I like jumping around and IDEMS is very nice to, well, need a better word than nice, but what words do I want? Like understanding or flexible?

[00:22:48] David: Accommodating is the right word. We try to be accommodating. And the point is that it’s about recognising that you can’t always, when you’re working on things, get the things you want to do and so on. But if the organisation recognises your strengths and your weaknesses, leaning into your strengths, and your strength of being able to jump in, contribute, and then jump somewhere else, is a great strength to the team.

Everybody brings something different. And so a big part of what we try to do, and we can do this because we have a tendency to look out for and employ exceptional people who can have that focus and know what they want. You know what you want. You want to have that diversity of experiences and you work in such a way that you make yourself useful at that.

And that’s what brings this sort of mutual benefit. And that’s what we can do. We can take people with the talent to be able to go deep and give them those choices of are you wanting to go deep? Are you wanting to cut across? Are you wanting to jump about? And not always, but quite often accommodate it and fit that into the sort of set of work we have.

[00:24:00] Lily: No it’s a really wonderful way of work. Really different and really wonderful company. And congratulations to you and Danny for setting up a company that won an award, an International Impact Award 2024.

[00:24:15] David: Thank you. It definitely wasn’t me and Danny, it was the whole team. So thanks to everybody for what they’ve done and a thanks to Social Enterprise UK for this approach, which does recognise the work and we appreciate that. 

[00:24:29] Lily: Yeah. Thank you very much.