ODI, in partnership with Practical Action Publishing and the Institute of Development Studies, are delighted to host Jeremy Holland who will speak about his most recent book Who counts? The power of participatory statistics.

Local people can generate their own numbers – and the statistics that result are powerful for themselves and can influence policy. Since the early 1990s there has been a quiet tide of innovation in generating statistics using participatory methods. Development practitioners are supporting and facilitating participatory statistics from community-level planning right up to sector and national-level policy processes. Statistics are being generated in the design, monitoring and evaluation, and impact assessment of development interventions.

Through chapters describing policy, programme and project research, Who Counts? provides impetus for a step change in the adoption and mainstreaming of participatory statistics within international development practice. The challenge laid down is to foster institutional change on the back of the methodological breakthroughs and philosophical commitment described in this book. The prize is a win–win outcome in which statistics are a part of an empowering process for local people and part of a real-time information flow for those aid agencies and government departments willing to generate statistics in new ways.

Copies of the book will be available at a special launch price of £10 per copy on the day.