Professor Mustafizur Rahman, Executive Director, and Dr Fahmida Khatun, Research Director, CPD have recently participated at the Fourth Regional Meeting of Think Tank Initiative (TTI-RM4) in Kathmandu, Nepal.
The TTI-RM4 titled Asia in the New World: Emerging Research Themes was organised by I-SET, Nepal, a TTI grantee during 9-10 June 2014.
Professor Mustafizur Rahman was a panellist at a session on “Four years of TTI: Integrating learning within organisations reflecting on achievements and challenges”. Panellists in the session reflected upon the roles think tanks can play in policy influence arena and draw lessons from their work for improved public policy and practices. Professor Rahman discussed issues such as the challenges CPD faces in undertaking its activities and what strategies should be pursued to overcome such challenges entailed in effectively engaging in the public discourse.
It was discussed that the most unique aspect of TTI member organisations in South Asia is their diversity in scope, history, area of work and engagement in the policy arena. Each organisation has tremendous expertise that can yield lessons for other think tanks across the region. The initial TTI grant contributed to the evolution in each organisation. As that evolution continued, each Think Tank generated key learning to improve themselves as knowledge/evidence producers. The TTI grant aimed to support each organisation in responding to myriad challenges that their respective countries face.
Dr Fahmida Khatun was a panelist at a session on “Organisational adaptation in the changing eco-systems”. Dr Fahmida shared the experience of CPD in terms of its evolving ecosystem and how they might evolve in the future. She also discussed how CPD balances the need for flexibility with structural requirement within an organisation?
The major focus of the session was to discuss how the ecosystem of each organization has changed over period. Each country in South Asia has diverse political and social environments with differential social context. Changes in geopolitical landscape and in-country socio-political environment regularly generate shocks that impact a Think Tank’s operation in terms of their nature of engagement, production of knowledge, as well as availability of funding. Each organisation has its own story of how it adapts to external environment and continues to remain agile despite in-built organisational rigidity.
TTI member organisations in South Asia have been conducting annual regional meetings to share and learn experiences of the TTI funded think tanks. Three TTI grantee regional meetings have been organised during the phase 1 of TTI support, viz., two in India and one in Sri Lanka, along with an international gathering in South Africa. This 4th Think Tank Initiative Regional Meeting (TTI-RM4) on brought representatives from sixteen TTI grantee organisations from across South Asia.
The Think Tank Initiative (TTI) is a multi-donor program of International Development Research Centre (IDRC) dedicated to strengthen the independent policy research institutions—or “think tanks” —in 49 developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia. TTI’s goal is to enable think tanks to provide sound research and to ensure that policymakers in participating countries consistently use objective, high-quality research to develop and implement policies.
To achieve this, the initiative currently provides a number of think tanks in Asian, South American and African countries with core, non-earmarked funding. The support allows institutions to attract, retain and build local talent, develop an independent research program, and invest in public outreach to influence national and regional policy debates. Such funding is combined with dedicated technical support in three broad areas: research methods and skills, policy engagement and communication, and general organisational development. Among many activities, the initiative supports peer-to-peer review, and learning and exchange by bringing together the funded institutions and outside experts.