A QUICK OVERVIEW
Origins
DMI was set up in 2005 by Roy Head, who has spent his career pushing the limits of what mass media can achieve in post-conflict and low-income countries. Roy worked at the BBC and the UN before setting up the health division of the BBC World Service Trust in 1997, and leading award-winning media campaigns in 16 countries. Roy set up DMI to bring scientific rigour to mass media campaigning, by modelling and testing how many lives can be saved, and acting on this.
Objectives
We run radio, television and mobile campaigns to change behaviours and improve lives in developing countries. We generate evidence of impact using robust evaluations, and scale up the most effective campaigns to reach many millions of people. Our focus areas include child survival, nutrition, family planning and early childhood development. We are the first organisation to demonstrate through two randomized controlled trials (RCTs), that mass media interventions can change behaviours.
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Organisation
DMI is a UK-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) with two arms: a community interest company and a company limited by shares. We are based in London with offices throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Our team consists of 74 people across 10 offices:
London, UK Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso Mwanza, Tanzania Maputo, Mozambique Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Antananarivo, Madagascar Kampala, Uganda Lilongwe, Malawi Lusaka, Zambia Current vacancies
We're hiring! Please find our current vacancies here.
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FILMS ABOUT DMI
Why DMI? DMI's CEO, Roy Head, describes how DMI was created to bring together the very different worlds of media and science, and how it has the potential to save many thousands of lives.
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Changing behaviours. Everything that DMI does is based on changing behaviours. To do this, we combine field research with creative techniques. This film shows that process at work in Burkina Faso.
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The science. What is the science that underpins DMI's work? How many lives can we actually save? What is a DALY? Professor Jimmy Whitworth, Dr Richard Horton and Roy Head present the key concepts.
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INDEPENDENT AUDITS OF DMI'S IMPACT
GiveWell has ranked DMI as one of the most high-impact, cost-effective non-profit organisations in the world.
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DMI earned the maximum grade of three stars for each quality component of the impact audit: (i) quality of evidence; (ii) quality of monitoring systems; and (iii) quality of protocols for iterative learning.
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DMI is on a list of highly effective charities drawn up by a panel of experts for The Life You Can Save. The Panel aggregates the best research from outside sources and adds additional scrutiny to decide which charities to include.
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