2024 Dignity Report

IDinsight Partners with Catholic Relief Services to Elevate Dignity in Development 

IDinsight’s north star is impact. We only conduct evaluations that are decision-focused. We build partnerships with like-minded social sector leaders who are ready to make decisions based on data and evidence. That is also true of the dignity agenda. To advance our mission of championing dignity in development, we sought a partner who shared our commitment and had the operational expertise to collaborate on a rigorous evaluation. 

After a careful selection process, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) quickly emerged as an ideal implementing partner. With a long-standing commitment to supporting communities with respect and empathy, CRS aligns with our values and demonstrates the operational capacity and experience to support rigorous, dignity-centered research.

Building on a long-held commitment to dignity 

Since its founding 80 years ago, CRS has focused on upholding the dignity of the people they serve worldwide. Guided by Catholic social teaching, CRS’s mission is to “promote the sacredness of human life and the dignity of the human person.” This commitment to dignity has evolved from a guiding principle to a more deliberate integration into CRS’s programs and operations.

Recently, CRS has  taken steps to integrate dignity more deliberately into their work, starting by measuring, developing, validating and deploying dignity interventions. “In addition to the organization’s mission and guiding principles, what drove us towards trying to understand and measure respect for dignity is seeing first-hand how these issues matter to people and how they influence the effectiveness of many of our programs,” explains Tony Castleman, CRS’s Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning.

CRS, in partnership with the University of Notre Dame and with support from the GHR Foundation, developed two tools to assess respect for dignity in their programs:

1. Project Respect for Participant Dignity Scale: This tool evaluates the extent to which program implementation respects participants’ dignity, focusing on aspects such as inclusion, respectful interactions, and safety.
2. Respect for Dignity in Daily Life Index: This measure examines how participants experience respect for dignity in their households, communities, and institutions, as well as how they respect others’ dignity.

Additionally, CRS developed the Human Dignity Index (HDI) to assess respect for dignity within the workplace. The HDI captures employees’ perceptions of respect for their dignity by the organization and supervisors, emphasizing the link between dignity, staff engagement, and productivity.

Through this innovative and data-driven approach, CRS has exemplified how organizations can transform values into concrete actions, prioritizing dignity both within and outside its operations.

Next Steps

In the coming months, we plan to work alongside CRS to launch and rigorously test a range of dignity-focused interventions within their existing programs. This partnership aims to bring concrete insights into how dignity can be practically upheld in a real-world context. 

CRS and IDinsight plan to engage in a co-creation process, working side-by-side to design intervention elements, train program staff, and ensure that each dignity-focused initiative aligns with both CRS’s mission and our rigorous research standards. CRS would lead on-the-ground implementation, from training field staff to engaging local stakeholders and managing communication channels with participants. Meanwhile, IDinsight intends to provide technical guidance and lead data analysis to ensure that findings capture the true impact of these interventions. 

As of this writing, we are exploring which program(s) and country to focus on and will share more soon.

Through this partnership, we hope to set a new standard for development where dignity is a key measure of success. As we move forward, our goal is to build a robust foundation of evidence that elevates dignity to the forefront of the development sector.