Dates: 2013 – 2015
Funding: DG Murray Trust
SALDRU people
PIs: Malcolm Keswell and Justine Burns
Project staff: Ece Yagman
ACTIVATE! is a network of young leaders equipped to drive change for the public good across South Africa. The project aims to connect youth who have the skills, sense of self and spark to address tough challenges and initiate innovative and creative solutions that can reshape our society. The project, in part, arose out of dissatisfaction with programmes designed to alter risky behaviour through the use of information campaigns alone. DG Murray Trust (DGMT), one of the project’s funder, feels that a different approach must be taken, motivating them to design programmes that target a much broader range of correlates of risky behaviour.
In 2012, a pilot was run in order to ascertain the best way to measure the outcomes of interest, including behavioural markers like trust in others, altruism, risk preference and discounting. A suite of experiments was designed to elicit these behavioural outcomes. On the basis of the pilot programme, UCT was awarded grants spanning 2013-2015 to carry out a full-scale evaluation. For the 2014-2015 evaluation, the project will be using a full Randomised Control Trial design, with 500 participants entering the programme in 2014, and 500 entering in 2015, who will then be compared to a control group.
For more information, visit the Activate! website.