Understanding the digital lives
Understanding the digital lives of the vulnerable to advance policy and product design
What role do digital products play in poor people’s lives? If we want a digital environment that enables low-income people, especially women, to access finance, education, and health, then we need to understand the gendered and social differences in the digital lives of the poor.
​
That is the goal of the Digital Portfolios of the Poor project. It builds on the methodology used in Dr. Daryl Collins’ best-seller Portfolios of the Poor, where researchers studied how the poor managed their money. Now, we want to understand how the poor manage their digital lives, and the digital products they have access to.
​
This understanding is fundamental to design better digital products to improve the lives of the poor, better policies to protect the vulnerable and better education efforts around data privacy and risks, especially to women.
Understanding
the digital lives
of vulnerable people
Header Title
Header Subtitle
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Funder
This is your item description. Use this space to add a description of the services, products, team members or any other items you want to highlight on your site. Have a lot to say? Easily turn any item into a full page by clicking ‘Create a page from this item’ in the edit panel.
Decodis
Organizer
This is your item description. Use this space to add a description of the services, products, team members or any other items you want to highlight on your site. Have a lot to say? Easily turn any item into a full page by clicking ‘Create a page from this item’ in the edit panel.
The Henry J. Leir Institute
Collaborator
This is your item description. Use this space to add a description of the services, products, team members or any other items you want to highlight on your site. Have a lot to say? Easily turn any item into a full page by clicking ‘Create a page from this item’ in the edit panel.
The Fletcher School
Collaborator
This is your item description. Use this space to add a description of the services, products, team members or any other items you want to highlight on your site. Have a lot to say? Easily turn any item into a full page by clicking ‘Create a page from this item’ in the edit panel.
Tufts University
Collaborator
This is your item description. Use this space to add a description of the services, products, team members or any other items you want to highlight on your site. Have a lot to say? Easily turn any item into a full page by clicking ‘Create a page from this item’ in the edit panel.
Graam Vaani
Field partner in India
This is your item description. Use this space to add a description of the services, products, team members or any other items you want to highlight on your site. Have a lot to say? Easily turn any item into a full page by clicking ‘Create a page from this item’ in the edit panel.
Learning Lions
Field partner in Kenya
This is your item description. Use this space to add a description of the services, products, team members or any other items you want to highlight on your site. Have a lot to say? Easily turn any item into a full page by clicking ‘Create a page from this item’ in the edit panel.
Jane Doe Foundation
Field partner in Nigeria
This is your item description. Use this space to add a description of the services, products, team members or any other items you want to highlight on your site. Have a lot to say? Easily turn any item into a full page by clicking ‘Create a page from this item’ in the edit panel.
John Doe Institute
Field partner in Pakistan
This is your item description. Use this space to add a description of the services, products, team members or any other items you want to highlight on your site. Have a lot to say? Easily turn any item into a full page by clicking ‘Create a page from this item’ in the edit panel.
The Fletcher School Team
Anulika Mefor
Research Assistant - Nigeria
Daniel Kibet
Research Assistant - Kenya
Lakshmee Vinayak Sharma
Research Assistant - India
Robin Tharakan
Research Assistant - Cybersecurity/Privacy
Sakshi Chandra
Research Assistant - Communications
Research
Qualitative insights, at scale
This project will develop insights by collecting primary qualitative data at scale using a new method developed and piloted by Daryl Collins, CEO and Founder of Decodis. This new and innovative approach leverages tech-led methods including Interactive Voice Recording (IVR), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and sociolinguistics.
The project engages with local partners in each of the four countries – India, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan to collaborate on the collection of the data. To learn more about the methodology that is being employed for this project, please visit the Decodis website.
Principal Investigators
Dr. Daryl Collins
CEO and Founder, Decodis
Author of the acclaimed Portfolios of the Poor and a pioneer working at the intersection of finance and human vulnerability. In the past two decades, Dr. Collins has built a broad portfolio of work with foundations, bilateral donors, governments, NGOs and private service providers. Her work is grounded in a deep understanding of the lives of vulnerable communities across the globe, leveraging the experience of executing Financial Diaries studies in over 10 countries. Dr. Collins spent the last decade as Managing Director and CEO of niche consulting BFA. She holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from New York University.
Dr. Katrina Burgess
Director, Henry J. Leir Institute (Tufts University)
Dr. Burgess is Associate Professor of Political Economy and Director of the Henry J. Leir Institute for Migration and Human Security at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She is the author of Courting Migrants: How States Make Diasporas and Diasporas Make States, and Parties and Unions the New Global Economy along with numerous pieces on labor politics, remittances, migration, and diasporas. She has been a consultant for USAID and served as Assistant Director of the U.S.-Mexico Project at the Overseas Development Council in Washington, DC and Associate Director of the California-Mexico Project at USC in Los Angeles. Dr. Burgess received a BA in political science from Swarthmore College, an MA in international relations from the University of Southern California, and a PhD in politics from Princeton University.
.jpg)
