Past Presentations
In July 2026, our team joined collaborators and partners at The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) to co-facilitate the 2026 Impact Evaluation Retooling Workshop in Nairobi, Kenya. Convened by AERC in collaboration with AIR, the University of North Carolina, UNICEF, and The Transfer Project, the six-day programme brought together 29 university faculty members, selected from more than 200 applicants. The cohort represented 32 countries, including 24 African nations, with 14 women and 15 men drawn evenly from 12 Francophone and 12 Anglophone African countries.
In June 2026, PRESTO, alongside UNICEF and the National Institute of Statistics (INE), disseminated findings from a national study on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices surrounding violence against children in São Tomé and Príncipe. The event brought together senior stakeholders, including UNICEF's Representative, the President of INE, and the Ministers of Education and Labour, to discuss the data and its implications for child protection policy and programming.
PRESTO was represented at the World Bank’s Fragility Forum 2026, highlighting findings from a PRESTO-led study, commissioned by the World Food Programme, which aims to understand how social protection can shape social cohesion. The study is part of a larger joint research project led by the World Food Programme, UNICEF, and the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Programme (World Bank). A report from the study is forthcoming.
In December 2025, PRESTO’s Tia Palermo presented at the Global Impact Evaluation Forum 2025 in Rome. She provided insights on investing in child outcomes and emerging evidence on Cash Plus programming for adolescents.
Is social protection just a handout? Does it discourage work? Or are the systems plagued by fraud? In September 2025, Tia Palermo was a featured guest on the socialprotection.org podcast. The episode unpacked some of the biggest myths surrounding social protection systems and explored the real data behind the rhetoric.
In June 2025, PRESTO’s Tia Palermo and Maja Gavrilovic presented during a socialprotection.org webinar on a recent paper, “Dispelling Myths on Gender and Cash Transfer in Africa.” The paper and webinar highlight six common myths around gender and cash transfers.
In October 2024, Kate Rogers (PRESTO), Tia Palermo (PRESTO) and Maliana Marcelino Serrano (UNICEF São Tomé and Príncipe) presented a poster on 'Risk factors for violent child discipline in São Tomé and Príncipe' at The Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) Forum 2024 in South Africa.
In October 2024, PRESTO’s Tia Palermo shared Transfer Project findings and regional evidence on cash transfers at Rwanda’s social protection conference, hosted by the Ministry of Local Government, with support from FCDO and Sida.
In September 2024, Happyness Nyaborogo (University of Dar es Salaam) presented an excellent overview of PRESTO's collaborative study on gender equitable attitudes and child feeding practices from the Stawisha Maisha evaluation at the UNICEF Tanzania 'Building Brighter Futures' conference.
Workshop “Health in the Anthropocene”
PRESTO's Leah Prencipe and Natasha C. Allard presented in September 2024 at a workshop hosted by the Department of Economics and Management at the University of Florence. Dr Prencipe presented on the post-intervention impacts of a cash plus intervention for Tanzanian adolescents, a study conducted in collaboration with UNICEF Innocenti, UNICEF Tanzania, the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF), EDI Global, and the Tanzania Commission for AIDS. Allard presented on the link between community-level gender attitudes on child feeding practices and nutritional status in rural Tanzania, a study conducted in collaboration with UNICEF Tanzania, EDI Global, Empathea Africa, and TASAF.
Social Assistance for Adolescent Girls: What we Know
In September 2024, Tia Palermo served as a panelist for “How can social protection enhance adolescent girls’ agency and wellbeing?" during the Power4Girls Expert Series hosted by UNICEF in New York, NY.
In July 2024, our collaborators—Respichius Mitti
(EDI Global) and Lusajo Kajula (Empathea Africa & PRESTO) presented a poster at the African Evidence Summit (AES) 2024 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The poster highlighted the Stawisha Maisha impact evaluation, one of our recent joint projects assessing a cash plus intervention to improve child nutrition.
In July 2024, our team joined collaborators and partners at The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) to co-facilitate the Impact Evaluation Faculty Retooling Workshop in Nairobi, Kenya. The event brought together 31 PhD economists across 20 countries in Africa.
In May 2024, PRESTO's Kate Rogers served as a panelist during a webinar hosted by UNICEF and socialprotection.org. Dr. Rogers highlighted findings and recommendations from a new systematic review of cash plus or bundled interventions targeting adolescents in Africa to reduce HIV risk, published in BMC Public Health in January 2024.
In April 2024, Tia Palermo and Maja Gavrilovic shared findings and recommendations for collecting and analysing sex-disaggregated social protection data during a SocialProtection.org webinar.
In May 2024, PRESTO's Morgon Banks and Tia Palermo presented during a SocialProtection.org webinar on new training materials for best practices on improving inclusivity in social protection systems.