Learn how to evaluate your program with JOI Brazil

The Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated labor market challenges in Brazil, where over the last decades productivity has stagnated, unemployment has risen, and labor force participation has reached an historic low.

With support from Arymax Foundation, B3 Social, Potencia Ventures, Inter-American Development Bank, and Insper, J-PAL Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) launched the Jobs and Opportunity Initiative (JOI) in Brazil to evaluate innovative strategies that address the country’s most pressing employment challenges.

JOI Brazil builds off the work of J-PAL’s global Jobs and Opportunity Initiative, driving rigorous research into priority questions in the labor markets space, including: What policies are most effective at improving labor market conditions? Under what circumstances does firm growth lead to job creation? Which design features of skills training programs have the most impact? How can economies best prepare high-skilled and lower-skilled workers for changing labor demands?

Over the next five years, JOI Brazil will fund new research that builds rigorous evidence on creating quality employment opportunities in Brazil, and will work with Brazilian governments, civil society, private sector organizations, and foundations to ensure that the evidence is used to inform future policymaking. Research anchored in scientific evidence will help identify effective interventions and scale-up the mechanisms that consistently impact people's lives.

How does it work?

JOI Brazil maps the trends of labor market challenges in Brazil and those actors who have been working to find innovative solutions for them. The initiative works on two fronts: social incubation, a three-stage process focused on capacity building for policymakers and program implementers; and technical and funding support to Brazilian researchers on priority JOI Brazil topics via research assistants sponsored through our direct research incubation support (DRIS) program and competitive funding to implement impact evaluations.

The social incubation process

JOI Brazil’s social incubation process aims to support organizations in developing an evaluation proposal that can be funded through JOI. In three free-of-charge phases, the process offers information, capacity building, and personalized technical assistance to policy and program implementers in governments, international agencies, foundations, civil society, and the private sector.

The process began with a webinar to announce the initiative’s launch and engage Brazilian actors interested in developing and evaluating innovative labor market solutions (a recording is available here), and will continue through mid-February. Read on to learn about each phase and how to get involved:

1. On November 4, 2021, JOI Brazil hosted a webinar on “Consistent Evidence and Best Practices in Evaluation: Meet JOI Brazil and be part of the J-PAL evaluation process,” where we were pleased to have the contributions of Diana Coutinho (Vice-Rector and Director of Advanced Studies, ENAP), Livia Gouvêa Gomes (Labor Market Specialist, IDB), Luis Junqueira (Co-founder, Letrus), and Bruno Ferman (Professor of Economics, FGV EESP) in conversation with Paula Pedro (Executive Director, J-PAL LAC) and Edivaldo Constantino (Manager, JOI Brazil). Three hundred representatives from academia, civil society, government, and the private sector attended, many of whom had no experience conducting randomized evaluations and sought guidance on how to build them into their work—an indication of the high demand for rigorous evidence in the labor sector.
2. In the second stage of the incubation process, JOI Brazil will hold a capacity building workshop on January 17-21, 2022. Through a combination of classes and exercises, participants will learn how to design and implement rigorous impact assessments and make progress on developing their evaluation proposals. Interested organizations may fill out the registration form, which is open until January 12, 2022.
3. In February, JOI Brazil will provide personalized technical assistance to finalize impact evaluation proposals from selected organizations, with the aim to maximize the chances of success of receiving funding from JOI Brazil. Interested organizations can fill out the application form, which will be open from January 24 to February 8, 2022. Results will be published on February 10, 2021.

We will also accept applications from organizations that did not take part in all three stages. The 2021 cycle is the first of at least five, and JOI Brazil’s social incubation process is open to any organization interested in conducting impact evaluations of its policies, programs, and projects whose themes align with JOI Brazil’s priority issues. We look forward to connecting with organizations interested in generating rigorous evidence through impact evaluations.

Please reach out to JOI Brazil’s Manager Edivaldo Constantino (joi-br@povertyactionlab.org) to connect with the initiative.

Por favor, entre em contato com Edivaldo Constantino (joi-br@povertyactionlab.org), Gerente da JOI Brasil, para se conectar com a iniciativa.