Efforts to Improve Tanzania’s Education Sector: Engagement with the University of Dodoma, Tanzania May 15-16, 2023 

Dissemination of Research Findings Multidisciplinary stakeholders convened in Morogoro, Tanzania over a period of two-day Monday May 15th through Tuesday May 16th, 2023 for an engagement during which results from a project funded by USAID through LASER PULSEwere disseminated. This project, running from April 2021-July 2023, is titled Tanzania Early Grade Social and Emotional Skills and...

The 2nd Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Kimeza

Voices of the Indigenous Peoples in Uganda at the USAID Mission On January 30th, 2022, representatives of the Ik and Tepeth communities, together with a team from Makerere University – ResilientAfrica Network (RAN) and Gulu University Constituent College (GUCC), engaged with 23 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Uganda Mission staff. This engagement took place...

Group Photo with TEF Participants

Tolerant Engagement Forums: Empirical Narratives of an Issue-Driven Researcher-Practitioner Partnership in Ethiopia

Mesele Mengsteab; David Dow; Jeremy Springman; Juan Tellez; Fitsum Hailu; & Sewareg Adamu Group Photo of Tolerant Engagement Forum Participants. Courtesy of Initiative for Peace and Development & Addis Ababa University, Our project, titled "Increasing Youth Engagement While Mitigating the Potential for Conflict in Ethiopia," was driven by youth-oriented issues. The first issue is that Ethiopia’s youth...

Data-Driven Decision Support for Improved Water Security in East Africa

Margaret W. Gitau, Victoria M. Garibay, Nicholas S. Kiggundu, James S. Kisekka, Victor Kongo, Bancy M. Mati, Daniel N. Moriasi, and Subira E. Munishi Photo: Nairobi River Pollution Credit: khyk54, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Wait! Yes, you. Stop for one moment and work with us on this one. Imagine a world without fresh water. Now...

Adapting Research During COVID-19

When a pandemic disrupts your research, how do you respond?  In 2020, COVID-19 threatened to upend one of LASER’s research projects and forced the research team to craft new ways forward. LASER had to evaluate risks alongside the research team and work to mitigate them. Research Project Managers at LASER deal with these unique contingencies on...

LASER PULSE Shares ERT Model @ AEA Conference

Between November 7-12, LASER PULSE sent a delegation to the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, to facilitate discussion around its Embedded Research Translation (ERT) model and application in LASER PULSE projects and learn with other attendees about innovative approaches toward evaluation.  Catholic Relief Services (CRS)’ Alexandra Towns and Laura Riddering, Indiana University’s...

Market Analysis for Olive Farmers in the Nineveh Plain of Northern Iraq

By Carlos Rosales, Visiting Scholar, Purdue University; Ariana Torres, Associate Professor, Purdue University; Asaad Karam, University of Duhok; and Rezgar Mohammed, University of Duhok Supporting partners: University of Duhok, Purdue University, LASER PULSE About the Project This LASER PULSE-funded project's overarching goal is to comprehend the connections between agricultural landscapes and cultural significance, in order to examine the...

Photo: pressbox.rw

Artificial Insemination in Dairy Cattle, a Technology Tool for Genetic Improvement, and Increased Milk Production in the Rwandan Context

In Rwanda, the livestock sector, especially dairy cattle farming, contributes substantially to food and nutrition security, poverty reduction, and farmer income generation. Despite successes in cattle production systems, farmers and technicians encounter several challenges that impede the full expression of cattle’s performance. The main hindrances to full expression are inadequate cattle breeding management (including genetics...