Innovations for Poverty Action Malawi: Faith Millongo

No­vem­ber 2018: Faith works as a re­search as­so­ciate at In­no­va­tions for Pover­ty Ac­tion Malawi, a re­search or­ga­ni­za­tion that col­lab­o­rates with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich to col­lect high-qual­i­ty data in the field. Find out what Faith shared with us about con­duct­ing re­search, what she finds in­spir­ing, and why she feels op­ti­mistic.

“All of a sud­den I love ex­per­i­ments. Get­ting to know more about ex­per­i­ments is also go­ing to help me in the fu­ture, not only in this project. We are go­ing to know more if we study the be­hav­ior of peo­ple us­ing ex­per­i­ments rather than just mod­els which are picked up from oth­er coun­tries and that are too gen­er­al.

I plan to study ex­per­i­men­tal eco­nom­ics, so this is part of the ex­pe­ri­ence to use in the fu­ture. I want to do a Mas­ters in Eco­nom­ics and I’d love to lead my own re­search project. I have al­ways been a shy per­son, I still am but get­ting to work with peo­ple from var­i­ous coun­tries in Malawi gives me op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­press my­self bet­ter and to im­prove my skills, so this is in­spir­ing.

I will talk about some­one. This guy start­ed as a Field Of­fi­cer, then worked as a Coun­try Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and now he is a Re­gion­al Man­ag­er. So, this guy makes me feel op­ti­mistic about my fu­ture be­cause I know that one day I will get to be the Prin­ci­pal In­ves­ti­ga­tor of the project!”
(Faith Mil­lon­go, Malawi)

In­ter­view by Juli­ette Thibaud, Edi­tion by Tania Man­riquez