The Impact Awards were set up in February 2011 as part of an initiative led by the Markets and Livelihoods Program, with the support of USAID.  This initiative is designed to improve how we learn, share knowledge and build the skills of our staff to deliver high quality work on the ground.

The Impact Awards are in practice a set of incentives, routines and processes to promote reflection about our work in the field, to learn from this work and to share the main lessons with our colleagues and other organisations who are also trying to improve how market systems work for the poor and the environment. 

The Impact Awards are not primarily about identifying and rewarding successful projects. They are fundamentally about identifying and rewarding lessons from our efforts to reduce poverty at scale using markets that matter to the poor. Even projects that may not be considered a "success" can win the Awards, as long as the applicants demonstrate deep analysis and reflection, and articulate the main lessons in ways that other practitioners can learn from them.         

The winning cases displayed here are the first set of examples of the reflections and lessons learned by some of our best staff and teams on the ground.