CEPA Annual Report 2012

From 2011 CEPA has worked with a matrix structure, with skill teams in impact monitoring, poverty assessment and measurement, and communications and policy influence focusing the content of their work on the five thematic areas: post-conflict development, infrastructure, migration, vulnerability and environment and climate change. We continue to work with thematic champions, who spearhead the thematic work, and with Team Leaders, who line manage CEPA staff within the different skill areas: CEPA's traditional PIM (Poverty Impact Monitoring), PAM (Poverty Assessment and Measurement), CAP (Communications and Policy) programmes. In 2012 CEPA's efforts at generating quality research, building organisational capacity and influencing change has, to a great extent, vindicated the matrix structure as a useful framework for our work. Within this framework we continue to carry out applied research, provide advisory services to clients and engage in dialogue and exchange. Discussions about strategising our training work continue.

In this report we will describe the activities of our major research projects and try to capture the energy that our communications and policy team has brought to ensuring that CEPA becomes a 'space for interaction', a dynamic forum for dialogue and exchange of ideas. We would also share our preoccupation with research quality and the opportunities we have created for staff development. In all 2012 was a comfortable year for CEPA, financially, and we were able to use that stability to raise the bar on research quality and research uptake, and to reinforce our position as an important, and innovative think tank in Sri Lanka.

The Research Programme: balancing long and the short term
Being a member of the IDRC Think Tank Initiative has brought more than just core financial support. It has created a space for us among other southern think tanks, and enabled us to interact with colleagues working in the 'knowledge sector' in developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. A number of our colleagues in the TTI community were interested in re-imagining development which we presented as a 'hot-topic' to the TTI Global Exchange in Cape Town in 2012. Their interest resulted in support from the TTI Matching Grant for our Annual Symposium on the same topic, and we were very pleased to have a few members from the TTI network with us at this event. The other 'hot topic' that received a lot of support was led by Dr Debapriya Bhattachcharya of CPD, Bangladesh and promoted the creation of a Southern Voice to influence the post-2015 development agenda. CEPA is contributing to the Southern Voice programme as well as participating in yet another TTI initiative, the Organisational Capacity Building Action Research project with four other think tanks from Pakistan, Ghana, Rwanda and Ecuador.

CEPA continues to partner the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in the UK and is member of the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC) which ODI leads, together with NCCR in Nepal, SDPI in Pakistan, AREU in Afghanistan, the Feinstein International Centre at Tufts University in Boston, USA, and the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. CEPA is a major player in the global consortium, led by ODI, that is monitoring the impact of 3ie's impact evaluations on policy. Other partners are Commsconsult (working in Africa and the UK) and CIPPEC (working from Argentina in Latin America)

3ie
In conversation with Nilakshi de Silva, Task Manager of the project

In 2012 CEPA was contracted by 3ie - International Initiative for Impact Evaluation to perform a 3 year policy impact monitoring project.
3ie, which is an off shoot of the World Bank, looks to contribute to effective policies for the poor through the generation of high quality evidence. As a result it funds many evaluations in Africa, Asia and South America. 3ie set up this project, in order to see if the evaluations they are funding are having an impact on policy in the countries where the research is being conducted.
The project started in March of last year and we proceeded to map out the ways in which we think the changes to policy can happen. There are about 70 3ie grantees and they were required to provide an analysis of the context in which their respective study was being conducted. Following this, we set up a monitoring framework which stated how we plan to collect the information and who we were going to sample, etc. This work took up most of the year (2012), as the area of policy monitoring is relatively new and there is little literature on the topic.
The benefits to CEPA participating in such a project are three fold. We are able to make a significant contribution to the newly emerging field of policy impact monitoring. We are able learn from the methods implemented by the consortium to measure the effectiveness of our own projects in impacting policy. We are also able to learn from the grantees themselves as they are all engaged in trying out some very innovative methods in conducting their research and this is a potential area of cross-learning for us.

The Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC) work, and the 3ie Policy Impact Monitoring (3ie PIM) project are two long-term projects that form the core of CEPA's programme funding. A third long- term project, the Diaspora Engagement in Conflict Settings - Sri Lanka Case Study which was begun in the latter part of 2011, is funded by IDRC Canada and coordinated through UK Oxford University's Centre for Migration, Policy and Society.

The SLRC work falls under the post-conflict development thematic, and is managed from within the PAM programme. The Diaspora Engagement project falls within the Migration thematic and is managed also within the PAM programme. The 3ie PIM project is a major activity of the PIM programme and stretches CEPA's impact monitoring capacity to include the emerging field of policy impact monitoring.

In addition CEPA has engaged in several short term research activities. Some of these have built on previous work and added to CEPA's understanding of a particular sector or issue, while others have broken new ground. The Study on Social Welfare and Labour Productivity in the Plantation Sector (a study commissioned by WUSC) and the Facilitation of a Workshop on Emerging Challenges for the Plantation Sector (initiated by CARE International) built on CEPA's work with plantation workers. Several other applied research studies contributed to CEPA's understanding of post-war Sri Lanka. These included a Value Chain Analysis of 40 Small and Medium Enterprises in Trincomalee and Batticoloa Districts for ACTED; a mid-term review of USAID's Public Private Alliances on Dairy Enhancement in the Eastern Province (DEEP) and Sustainable Agriculture through Commercialisation (SAC) with Sewalanka; and Research on Land Acquisition, Livelihoods and Food Security in Sri Lanka commissioned by OXFAM. Studies in the underserved settlements of the city for the World Bank added to CEPA's portfolio of assignments on urban poverty.

Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium
In conversation with Romeshun Kulasabanathan, Task Manager of the project

The SLRC research programme was established in 2011, with the aim of strengthening the evidence base and informing policy and practice around livelihoods and services in post conflict areas. We completed the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium's (SLRC) longitudinal panel survey in 2012. The survey is the first of two that will be conducted as part of this six year programme funded by the UK Department of International Development (DFID).
CEPA focused its research on the three districts of Jaffna, Mannar and Trincomalee and sought to find what access to basic services, social protection and means of livelihoods the people in these areas have. More specifically, we wanted to focus on the impact of state, non-state and private sector actions on small-scale fisher households (post conflict), in the North and East of Sri Lanka.
For our focus on the fishing sector, the analysis was done at two levels. At the first level, we looked at the policy and strategic directive of the state in relation to fisheries. At the second, an intra-and inter-household analysis was carried out in order to generate an understanding of micro-power structures and networks. This was in order to investigate how livelihood outcomes vary by age and gender, and to understand how coping strategies used during conflict can be strengthened into sustainable livelihoods in a post-war setting.
Looking forward to 2013, we hope to publish the findings from the survey as well as start qualitative studies based on the survey findings. One study will be about the importance of education in the livelihoods of the communities in the areas studied. The survey showed us that there is a gap between the perception of fishermen regarding social protection available to them and the support that the fisheries department claims to offer. Another study in 2013 will be about understanding the extent of that gap.

CEPA subscribing member Professor Kalinga Tudor de Silva facilitated a collaboration with the University of Sussex on a research programme on Philanthropy and Development in Colombo; and the World Bank supported CEPA to carry out Third Party Continuous Benefit Monitoring of Roads for the Road Sector Assistance Project Kanthale-Trincomalee Section Ambepussa-Kurunegala-Trincomalee Highway. The former encouraged CEPA to engage with the corporate sector, while the latter helped highlight some of the institutional obstacles to implementing benefit monitoring. The World Bank also supported CEPA to explore the contribution of older people to society through the gathering and presentation of information in audio-visual form.

Diaspora Engagement in Conflict Settings
In conversation with Mohammed Munas, Task Manager of the Project

Through our initial findings in the study on Diaspora Engagement in Conflict Settings we found interestingly that the perception of diaspora has changed. There is generally a negative perception about diaspora. As we researched we first questioned if this perception has changed since the war ended and how it has changed. This was a key area of interest to us. We discovered that the negative perception in Sri Lanka remains the same, when comparing pre and post 2009. The extent of that perception, however, has changed. By tracking media articles we discovered that the pre 2009 perception was that the diaspora were trying to support the LTTE and support a war in Sri Lanka. Now the perception is that the diaspora supports the same concepts that the LTTE held but in a different way. So the negative perceptions remain but it has changed with threshold events like the end of war and the formation of diaspora organisations such as the Global Tamil Forum.
We also tried to see if there is a difference between the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora and other Sri Lankan diaspora. We looked at the Muslim community and if there is a difference in the way they engage with the homeland. Our research proved that there is a difference. For instance, the Muslim diaspora does not currently work as a collective group. The Tamil diaspora because of the Tamil cause works in a collective way and in an international arena where they can push host governments to take action against the homeland government. This is the main difference between the two ethnicities when it comes to engagement. The Muslim diasporas' engagement is also with their immediate households and families whereas the Tamil diaspora will support their community. In Jaffna we observed that there is a high percentage of diaspora helping in building schools, temples and providing some economic activity. This has not happened in Muslim and Sinhala communities for various reasons.

The different research activities have heightened CEPA's preoccupation with quality. The need to maintain a high standard of knowledge generation has led CEPA to constantly question what the organisation means by quality at every point in the research cycle. Participation in the TTI Organisational Capacity Building action research project, provided CEPA with the space to reflect on these issues more systematically, and to begin to develop guidelines for quality at the points of research design, data collection and analysis, reporting and dissemination.

Communications and Policy Influence: broadening the audience
Much of CEPA's energy in 2012 has come from the Communication and Policy team. Encouraged by an enthusiastic new team leader, the team has used the space at no 29 Gregory's Road and CEPA's presence on social media (Facebook and Twitter) to expand CEPA's audience and to bring a variety of people together to discuss a range of issues relating to the five thematic areas and the overall Sri Lankan context. Frequent CEPA cafes, film and book club sessions and special guest lectures have complemented CEPA's quarterly open forums. An underlying thread has been to use artistic expression to stimulate discussion on current issues, beginning with a discussion of the play Kalumaali and its representation of women. CEPA also collaborated with the artist Anoma Wijewardene on her exhibition Deliverance, which juxtaposed her paintings that depicted man's interaction with the environment, with poetry, and with scientific information on climate change and water.

Space for Interaction
In conversation with Udan Fernando, Team Leader of the Communication and Policy Programme

In addition to long standing activities such as our Open Forums the 'Space for Interaction' introduced the CEPA Café Series in 2012. The Cafés target a younger group and are an informal and interactive discussion on topics closely related to work that is being done at CEPA.
As part of the Space for Interaction we also offered a course on what we call 'Facets of Neo-liberalism'. This was attended by a group of about 25 people comprising mainly of young researchers who were from both the non-profit as well as the commercial sector. We also opened up our 'space' for the use of external groups. The group Platform for Freedom held two media conferences at CEPA and another group hosted a book launch for a publication on women entrepreneurs. Letting others use our resources has also broadened the traffic coming into CEPA.
The guest lecture series facilitated the bringing of relevant information to CEPA. The lectures are mainly for CEPA staff and a guest lecturer is invited to speak on a subject that is either relevant or of interest to the team. The lecturer brings along his or her students, making it a small (approx. 15- 20 persons) but interactive forum. This has proved to be very stimulating to CEPA.
CEPA's visibility in the media greatly increased in 2012 with appearances by CEPA staff on six television talk shows relating to development issues on YATV. These shows were broadcast in Sinhala and English.

'Development in Art' was also a session at the Annual CEPA Symposium on "Re-imagining Development" which took place in December 2012 at the Mihilaka Medura in Colombo. The unusual setting supported an unusual agenda. Rather than showcase particular research on a theme, the "Re-imagining Development" Symposium invited people from different disciplines and professions to take a step back, reflect and generate new ideas on a diverse set of issues. These included environmental and sustainability issues, feminist perspectives, issues about knowledge and knowing, development in art and issues relating to urban development, wellbeing and ethics. Almost a hundred people attended the event, which concluded with an Open Forum that took the format of a panel discussion that included four parliamentarians. CEPA will continue to expand the discussion on reimagining development in the next few years, and to develop a global platform to exchange ideas.

As mentioned above, CEPA also increased its online audience by having a very active facebook page and twitter account. The website and poverty portal was redesigned in 2012, and work was done on creating a new thematic portal on informed migration with support from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

Strengthening Capacity: 'growing' our own PhDs and building a trilingual organisation

Organisational Capacity Building
In Conversation with Nilakshi de Silva, Task Manager of the study

There has always been a lot of debate on what constitutes quality research. Some people are of the opinion that the quality of one's research is dependent on whether it gets published in a peer reviewed journal or how many times it is quoted in newspaper articles. The fact remains that there is no real framework for producing quality research. That is, until now.
At CEPA, we began an initiative to understand what was meant by research quality and how we could develop a quality framework. We combined our initiative with that of the Think Tank Initiative's (TTI) Organisational Capacity Building (OCB) study which focused on the possibility of improving organisational capacity building for doing quality research. As part of the OCB study our findings would be combined with those of similar organisations in Ecuador, Rwanda, Ghana and Pakistan.
We tried different initiatives to see what could work and thereby be used to create a quality framework. In 2012 we conducted staff surveys and introduced a peer review mechanism. We broke down the research process into four stages; conceptualization, data collection, analysis and reporting. At each of these stages we looked for quality markers. We also began work on a research quality statement which will be available in 2013.
The results of our findings along with those of the other organisations are to be published as a book, the second draft of which has been completed. It will be a good resource for other research organisations, looking to build their capacity for quality research see how these processes are done.
While this study, being more internally focussed, does not strictly fall under any of our thematic areas the learning for CEPA through this initiative has been invaluable. We will continue to track our progress and look forward to formalising a framework through which the quality of our research may be improved.

At the CEPA annual retreat in 2012, reflections on how CEPA could strengthen the quality of its research, and enhance its reputation as a research organisation, recognised the importance of encouraging staff to attain higher qualifications. In 2012, the organisation was successful in recruiting one more Senior Professional with a PhD. One of CEPA's Research Professionals was also able to avail herself of the opportunity to register for a PhD programme at the University of Wageningen, as part of the capacity building activities of the Secure Livelihood Research Consortium. Her PhD research will form part of the outputs of this research programme.

At the retreat, CEPA also committed to striving to become a trilingual organisation. Tamil language classes continue, and CEPA's publication translation programme has been given a boost with funds from the Asia Foundation for translations. Increasing work in the north and east, including a project for strengthening the capacity of local government to collect and use evidence at the local level, will require CEPA also to expand staff able to communicate in Tamil.

CEPA's work has many seen and unseen supporters. CEPA's Finance and Administration team provide invaluable back office support to developing budgets, reporting to clients, logistics for field work and events, managing the office, new project development, and keeping track of funding pipelines and cash flows. CEPA's lunch continues to be a key feature of the organisation's culture. It creates a space for getting to know each other better, challenging the norm and stimulating new thinking.

CEPA's Board of Directors, and particularly its Chairman, has always taken a great interest in the work of the organisation and continues to provide the intellectual feedback and financial and management oversight that has helped keep CEPA on track. The institution of an Audit Committee has strengthened the organisation's financial reporting and accounting procedures. The Trustees of the Development Fund are being innovative in trying to put the Fund to the best use to ensure the long term sustainability of the organisation. There has been an increasing engagement with the subscribing members, and we hope that in the year to come we will have some collaborative research with more of them.

Networks/Associations

Evidence-Based Policy in Development Network (ebpdn - www.ebpdn.org) initiated by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), is a worldwide community of practice for think tanks, policy research institutes and similar organisations working in international development, to promote more evidence-based, pro-poor development policies. CEPA has been a member of the Core Groups of Stewards on the network since its start in 2007 and has been facilitating the South Asia ebpdn, the regional arm of the network, since its initiation in 2009.
SLEvA- Teaching Evaluation in South Asia
Climate Action Network - South Asia (CANSA)
Lanka Forum for Rural Transport Development (LFRTD)

The IDRC team in Delhi and in Ottawa, have been a source of encouragement and inspiration, and CEPA has enjoyed every opportunity to interact with them and with other members of the TTI cohort. CEPA's other partners, in the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium and in the 3ie PIM project, as well as representatives of local organisations, international NGOs and international development agencies who have commissioned CEPA's services and with whom CEPA has worked closely, have provided many opportunities for mutual learning. CEPA is happy to see such a variety of people turn up at our events, and look forward to their continued support in the years to come.

Innovation Fund

CEPA's "Innovation Fund" was set up to encourage initiatives that adopt an original approach to addressing the issue of poverty. The fund is financed through a 2% contribution from CEPA's annual service fees and is in its 10th year of operation. To date it has supported 40 initiatives.

Initiatives qualifying for selection need to be:

Clearly and specifically poverty focused,
Innovative,
Experimental,
Able to create change,
Realistically achievable within a time frame of one year,
Not favoured by a mainstream funder.

Each of the selected initiatives receive contributions of up to Rs 500,000/-. Awardees must be ready to share the outcomes and learning of their initiatives with the wider public in the form of reports, publications, seminars, project products, documentaries/audiovisuals, theatre, fine arts, etc.

The following projects are ongoing projects in 2011/2012:

1 Economic rehabilitation for persons with spinal cord injuries - The project aims to select a group of persons disabled due to spinal cord injuries. They will be introduced to appropriate income generation activities so that they can be economically independent and be lifted out of poverty.

2 Introduction of seaweed farming as an alternative livelihood and the popularisation of seaweed for human consumption in Kalpitiya - The project aims to introduce seaweed farming as an alternative income source for community members. The project hopes to capitalise on the large market for seaweed in Japan. There will also be a drive to popularise seaweed locally as it is known to be a high source of protein.

3 Project on economic rehabilitation for people with mental disabilities. The project hopes to introduce people with mental disabilities to livelihood options in the coir industry to re-integrate them into normal life, make them economically viable and thus eliminate poverty.