Data for Policy receives investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Sep 11, 2023

The Data for Policy global community of interest is delighted to announce that it has received investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Our community has a positive commitment to inclusion and equity, demonstrable by initiatives such as the inclusion scholarship programme for conference attendance, and by support for open research and data, exemplified by its open access partner journal Data & Policy, published by Cambridge University Press. The community already reaches across 73 countries in six continents, and we are ambitious to increase involvement of countries which are not well-represented in the global debate. To date we have seen organic growth of the network, but we now wish to expedite this through a positive strategy of engagement in under-represented regions.

Data for Policy CIC  is therefore delighted to enter into a new collaboration for 2022-23 with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Evans School Policy Analysis and Research Group (EPAR) at the University of Washington to develop a strategy to increase participation and engagement in the community of under-represented regions, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa.

The funding will support organisation of our Data for Policy 2022 conference in three regional centres (Hong Kong, Seattle and Brussels), and will also enable us to enhance our Data for Policy Inclusion Scholarship Programme. This programme supports participation from communities underrepresented in our activities due to financial reasons. More details of our scholarship programme can be found on on this page.

In addition, we will launch a project of pro-active engagement with Sub-Saharan Africa. We are now recruiting a researcher to work with us to deliver this. Please see our news item for full details of the role and how to apply.