Malaria, a deadly disease transmitted by the bites of infected mosquitoes, had been effectively eliminated from the developed world since the end of the World Health Organization's Global Malaria Eradication Campaign in 1969. In Africa, however, the disease remained a scourge through the early 2000s, killing close to a million people each year, most of them children under five. As a result, the international community set an ambitious goal: reduce malaria deaths in Africa to zero by the end of 2015. Rising to the challenge required the mobilization of a vast network of local, regional, national, and global actors in the for-profit, nonprofit, and public spheres. Local community groups in tiny African villages, national malaria control programs in malaria-endemic countries, national and international non-governmental organizations, faith-based organizations, foundations, individual philanthropists, research institutes, and huge multilateral bureaucracies like the United Nations Children's Fund, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank would be required to work together with focus and vigor to meet the goal. This case describes the history of the global fight against malaria, and the role of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals, the Global Fund, the President's Malaria Initiative, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, and other actors in collectively shepherding the effort. The Harvard Kennedy School Case Program has published three cases on the Mosquito Network. This case is adapted from "The Mosquito Network: Collaborative Entrepreneurship in the Fight to Eliminate Malaria Deaths (A)," HKS Case No. 2071.0, and "The Mosquito Network: Collaborative Entrepreneurship in the Fight to Eliminate Malaria Deaths (B)," HKS Case No. 2072.0, written by Gaylen Williams Moore.

On August 16, 2022, President Joseph Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). The wide-ranging law included provisions for lowering prescription drug costs, expanding the Internal Revenue Service, subsidizing the Affordable Care Act, and tax reform. But the largest share of the IRA's $738 billion investment-$369 billion-was allocated to mitigating climate change. The law was designed to meet several objectives: stimulate the economy and reduce inflation, create well-paid working-class+S16 jobs, and encourage consumers to buy American products-all within the framework of a carbon reduction strategy. The task of implementing the climate-related provisions of the IRA was daunting. It would require coordinating not just among the agencies of the federal government, but with state, local and tribal governments, with local organizations, and with the private sector. The case goes on to describe the provisions of the IRA and the plan for implementing the law while detailing the significant challenges to reducing the country's carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. HKS Case No. 2270.0

In the fourth quarter of 2021, South Africa's unemployment rate rose to 35%, the highest since 2008. Though some of the job losses could be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic, the country had already been experiencing high unemployment due to a slow growing economy. The news was worse for the country's youth. Of the 20.6 million people aged 15 to 34 years, 44.7% were neither employed nor in an education or a training program. South Africa's 2030 National Development Plan called for the creation of 11 million jobs between 2010 and 2030. This meant adding 600,000 jobs per year, but the country's economy had only produced 250,000 jobs per year, on average, between 2010 and 2020. In South Africa, young, first-time, job-seekers faced multiple hurdles to finding employment. Youth often lacked job-readiness skills-the behavioral and personal readiness to find and keep a job-and had low formal educational attainment, causing employers to be wary of hiring. In addi-tion, the country's minimum wage was a high proportion of average occupational salaries, providing further disincentives for employers to hire inexperienced workers. Also, workers in South Africa enjoyed significant legal protections to prevent unfair terminations, so employers risked incurring high costs associated with retaining workers later found to be unsuitable. Employers often tried to lower their risk by recruiting over-qualified or over-educated workers, which entrenched exclusion. During its first ten years, Harambee worked to match youth to jobs. The organization analyzed a job to define the specific competencies required, recruited excluded young people and tested them to determine if they possessed those competencies and if so, effected a match. If they did not have the competencies, defined the gap and determine the fastest, most efficient way to train them and move them into the job. This approach led to the organization's initial success but by 2016, its leaders recognized that it was imperative

In October 2020, the Inspector General of the United States Postal Service (USPS) conducted a survey of the American public and found that despite service challenges largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic-employee absenteeism, mail and package delays-91% of respondents held a positive opinion of the agency. Indeed, the percentage of respondents who said that the USPS provided excellent customer service rose seven points between 2019 and 2020, from 68% to 75%. But even as the public expressed its pride, support and satisfaction with the USPS, the agency posted a $9.2 billion loss in 2020. The General Accountability Office noted that USPS had lost $69 billion over the previous 11 fiscal years. This, despite steady revenue increases; in 2020, the USPS increased revenues by $2 billion over 2019, to $73 billion, which included new revenue from an 18.8% rise in package delivery. This case details the history of the USPS and its unique role as an independent agency of the US Federal government, with a focus on the financial, management and policy decisions that have contributed to its precarious position.

It was April 17, 2020, the night before the vote, and Kelsey Wirth, co-founder and board chair of Mothers Out Front, a non-profit climate justice organization, wondered if its Massachusetts chapter had garnered sufficient support from its members to ratify their proposed new charter. It is essential to have our members bought into this, thought Wirth. The members have to feel like they own this next step in our evolution of Massachusetts. The charter development team, dubbed Path to Power (P2P), had tried to address all the outstanding issues and concerns that had led to the initiative, but questions about decision-making authority, accountability, and representation remained unresolved. When each chapter's delegates gathered for the State Assembly, two-thirds must vote yes if the charter were to be adopted. It wasn't perfect, but if the charter did not pass, Wirth worried about how they would overcome the challenges facing the Mothers Out Front in Massachusetts. The case goes on to detail the challenges which led the organization to undergo a months-long effort to develop a charter-namely, the need for a clear decision-making and leadership structure. Mothers Out Front had grown organically from a Massachusetts-based grassroots effort into a national organization, but its structure had not evolved to keep pace and as a result, tension began to build within the organization. Members began to question decisions made by the leadership team; the leadership team felt disempowered and lacking the authority to make strategic decisions. Without a clear structure and process, the organization lacked coordinated, strategic thinking driving decisions. The lack of clarity around decision-making and structure made it difficult for its volunteers to carry out the work of the organization. Mothers Out Front leaders hired a team of consultants to guide them through the process of re-designing its structure in a way that engaged staff and volunteers throughout the organization.

In 2005, the faculty of the computer science department at Harvey Mudd College reviewed its statistics on gender matriculation. A long-time goal of the department had been to increase the number and proportion of women studying computer science at the school. To their consternation, they discovered that the number of women declaring computer science majors was declining. The case describes the steps the faculty took to redesign their core introductory course as well as the follow-up study that revealed a dramatic, sustainable increase in women's engagement: Harvey Mudd College raised the percentage of women computer science majors to over 50% in less than ten years. The case discusses the transformation of the culture and pedagogy-as well as specific actions taken by the faculty and school leadership-that fomented this change. The focus on the computer science program is set against the broader backdrop of Harvey Mudd College's efforts to attract and retain women students generally. HKS Case 2225.0

On August 24, 2015, Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, and Francois Hollande, president of France, met in Berlin to discuss solutions to what had become known as the European refugee crisis. The vast influx of refugees was the result of thousands from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq leaving their war torn countries to travel across the Mediterranean Sea or overland to seek refuge in European Union (EU) countries. The crisis had been building since the beginning of the year, leaving some countries-particularly those at the EU borders-overwhelmed with refugees. In the meantime the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF), Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, announced it had ratified an order suspending the Dublin convention, a 1990 protocol which forced refugees to apply for asylum in the first EU member country in which they set foot. "Germany will become the member state responsible for processing their claims," a government statement said of the refugees, largely from Syria. As a result, Germany quickly became the first-choice destination for Syrians. Word of Merkel's suspension of the Dublin protocol spread quickly among refugees-Syrian and otherwise-who were heading to the EU or already waiting in camps. Indeed, Hungary's ambassador to Germany, Peter Györkös, later claimed that on August 26, Serbian police found thousands of discarded passports on their side of the border. "From that moment on, every refugee was a Syrian," he told The Guardian.

In 2019, World Bank analyst Abebi Eke had a difficult assignment: decide whether to recommend that the World Bank, in line with its commitment to expanding financial inclusion to the world's poor, lend its support to a particular digital payments scheme. Eke was asked to investigate two of the most promising payment systems-UPI in India and M-Pesa in Kenya-and prepare a memo comparing the benefits and drawbacks of each. Eke had discovered that while successful digital payment systems often shared some aspects of their operating business models, their agent networks and even their marketing campaigns, their regulatory and corporate structures could be quite dissimilar. She also learned that digital payment services had flourished in some countries, both developed and developing, but not in others. Why? The World Bank's own research revealed that of the five countries that most successfully implemented mobile money-a form of digital payments-one was a low-income economy, one a lower-middle-income economy, and three were considered upper-middle-income economies, demonstrating there was no one route to achieving financial inclusion. To write her memo, Eke needed to deeply understand the drivers of and barriers to success in digital payments. The case presents students with a rich understanding of both digital payment systems, allowing students to compare and contrast them while assessing each one's likely success in another country. Case number 2173.0

The case examines the strategy, impact, and sustainability of a boutique philanthropy with a big goal: change the way people donate to charities. Epic Foundation was founded to support a portfolio of children's charities. Now, its leadership was considering taking on a broader role: to reshape the very nature of charitable giving-in the U.S., France, the United Kingdom and globally. Its wealthy, charismatic leader, Alexandre Mars, thought that Epic could be at the forefront of a movement to transform the global culture of giving. But there was an open question among the fundraising, communications and marketing teams at Epic about how to jockey between the management and growth of its portfolio and this new advocacy orientation. It was unclear whether Epic could simultaneously pursue both. Should Epic continue to grow and possibly diversify its portfolio of charities, or should it focus more on an advocacy model? Mars wanted to advocate for "making giving the norm"-a call for citizens to make frequent charitable donations through work, point-of-purchase and online channels. But were Epic's ideas truly innovative when it came to fostering this giving norm and was it positioned to advocate for it?

Even as a teenager, Nadine Vogel knew she wanted to be an executive with a FORTUNE 500 company. This case chronicles her journey and her life and career choices, from college through her midlife decision to leave the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, where she had spearheaded the launch of a new division aimed at serving parents of children with disabilities. Vogel's leadership and career negotiating skills are exemplified, as she navigates through a myriad of personal and professional obstacles.

"It's a celebration of the diversity and inclusion this project represents from its design, to its contracting, to its nonprofit partners," he said, referring to the process that Massport, the land's owner, had undertaken to select a developer for the hotel. Massport required that bidders incorporate diversity and inclusion (D&I) plans into their bids and announced that the plans would be considered alongside more traditional evaluation criteria such as building design, construction experience, and financial capabilities. On May 22, 2018, executives from the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) along with Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh gathered in the Seaport District of South Boston for a groundbreaking ceremony to celebrate the start of construction on a new hotel in Boston's Seaport District. The hotel, when completed in early 2021, would be the fourth largest in the state. "Today marks more than just a groundbreaking," said Mayor Walsh. "It's a celebration of the diversity and inclusion this project represents from its design, to its contracting, to its nonprofit partners," he said, referring to the process that Massport, the land's owner, had undertaken to select a developer for the hotel. Massport required that bidders incorporate diversity and inclusion (D&I) plans into their bids and announced that the plans would be considered alongside more traditional evaluation criteria such as building design, construction experience, and financial capabilities. The move was so unusual that some in the Boston development community doubted Massport was serious about giving so much weight-25%-to bidders' D&I plans. Nevertheless, at the groundbreaking of the $550 million hotel, Massport CEO Thomas Glynn told a Boston Business Journal reporter that Massport intended to use the new selection model for future projects.

Board Chair Nanne Boonstra was about to learn the details of a scaling strategy proposal for Mothers of Rotterdam, a fledgling social service program that helped the city's disadvantaged pregnant women. Boonstra's employer, a venture philanthropy foundation that was funding the program, was interested in whether it was feasible to scale the pilot program throughout Rotterdam. Other stakeholders hoped the program might be replicated elsewhere in the Netherlands or even within other European countries. Boonstra knew that some stakeholders were concerned about scaling too early-before research determined if the program was effective and for whom. He hoped that the consulting firm hired to design the scaling strategy would be able to answer the board's many questions about how best to move forward. How do you turn an innovative start-up program into a structured professional program without losing the passion and energy that comes from its founders? How do you go from a start-up to a more structured, formalized organization? Is the program's inventor the right person to scale the program? How long does a program need to run to determine whether it is effective? Is it necessary/advisable to scale the program in Rotterdam first, and focus on replicating the program in other cities afterwards or can this happen in parallel? Is there a risk of other cities trying to copy the program without guidance from the Rotterdam staff and "not getting it right"? The case goes on to unfold the story of Mothers of Rotterdam-an entrepreneurial social service program based in the Netherlands-from its inception through the board of directors meeting. The program's stakeholders, eager to broaden the impact of Mothers of Rotterdam grapple with how the program can best be scaled up. Of significance is the role of the organization's charismatic founder, Barend Rombout, who is credited with driving the program's successful-if unorthodox-approach to social service delivery. Case number 2128.0

In Serbia, citizens are reluctant to become politically active but young leaders Babović and Stojicic, the case protagonists, are determined to prod their peers into taking a stronger role in the country's government. Using community organizing principles, they launch Serbia on the Move, a nongovernmental organization created to organize and energize citizens to drive change in Serbia. On several occasions, Serbia on the Move's leaders find themselves at odds with the Serbian government as they campaign for the adoption of anti-corruption practices, maternity benefits and other programs and policies. The case describes the organization from its founding through its quest to scale nationally and its goals of building a strong organizational structure, volunteer base and impactful campaigns. Case number 2108.0

On December 10, 2013 more than 90,000 South Africans gathered at the FNB Stadium in Soweto outside of Johannesburg to mourn the death of the country's first black president, Nelson Mandela. At the stadium, several dignitaries addressed the mourners, which included United States President Barack Obama and then-current or former heads of state or government from over 100 countries-one of the largest assemblages of world leaders in history. Obama took the podium to eulogize Mandela: "[His] passing is rightly a time of mourning, and a time to celebrate a heroic life," he said. "But I believe it should also prompt in each of us a time for self-reflection. With honesty, regardless of our station or our circumstance, we must ask: 'How well have I applied his lessons in my own life?'" This case provides students with a short history of South Africa followed by a contextualized biography of Nelson Mandela-from birth through death-that emphasizes the key events and actions that served to shape his life and reflect his values and leadership. Mandela demonstrated adaptability and malleability and many shifts in strategy, emerging from the impetuousness of youth to become a Zen-like elder statesman. Over the course of his life, though, his core values did not change. Mandela showed ability to navigate and negotiate with different stakeholders. How did he get power from both sides while maintaining legitimacy in both camps? How was he able to avoid the neither/nor that can alienate both sides? These are the key questions students will grapple with during the class discussion. Case number 2104.0

In June 2009, Martha Johnson was selected to lead the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), a federal agency headquartered in Washington, D.C that largely oversaw government procurement. After Johnson, a GSA veteran, was sworn into office in February 2010, she told reporters she was committed to holding the GSA to the highest ethical standards. In October 2010, ten months after she took office, four of GSA's Public Buildings Service (PBS) regions held their biennial Western Regions Conference (WRC) with the object of providing job skills training and encouraging the exchange of ideas among senior managers in the four regions. The conference, held at the upscale M Resort Spa Casino in Henderson, Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas, was dubbed "A Showcase of World-Class Talent" by GSA officials with the intention of matching the conference's theme to the Las Vegas location. In December 2010, just a few weeks after the conference ended, an investigation into the event was requested citing excessive expenses as well as possible employee misconduct. This case traces the investigation as well as the steps the GSA took during the following nine months to strengthen its leadership, improve organizational controls and address conference management. Case number 2087.0

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. South Africa's Nedbank is a leader in its market - but to stay in that position, it needed to identify new ways to serve its existing business clientele as well as attract new customers. Its solution: use the extensive transaction data the bank collects to help customers improve their service.

In 2014, three former Code for America fellows embarked on a one-year skunk works journey to use technology to improve the enrollment process for California's SNAP (food stamp) program, CalFresh, to increase the number of residents receiving benefits in San Francisco. The case describes a user-centered approach to identifying bottlenecks within the CalFresh enrollment process and the low cost, fast solution proposed-and built-by the group. The case asks students to consider the opportunities, challenges and risks created by information technology in the public sector and whether taking a user-centered approach to policy implementation can improve social service delivery.

On June, 26, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the federal Defense of Marriage Act violated the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment protection of equal liberty, effectively overturning the law. Pennsylvania, however, banned same-sex marriage. Despite the state law, D. Bruce Hanes, a register of wills in Pennsylvania, agreed to honor a request from two women seeking a same-sex marriage license-an act of official disobedience that immediately threw Hanes under a national spotlight. Citing his oath to uphold both the Pennsylvania and U.S. constitutions and noting that the two were "diametrically opposed" on the issue, Hanes said: "I decided to come down on the right side of history and the law." On June 26, 2015-precisely two years later-the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed a right to same-sex marriage. The day the ruling was released, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear announced that he had instructed state agencies and county clerks to comply immediately with the court's ruling. Nevertheless, on Monday morning, June 29, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to any couples-same-sex or heterosexual. Davis said that she decided to deny marriage licenses to all couples because of her religious convictions and said that "Marriage is ordained by God to be a man and a woman." Using the context of contemporary same-sex marriage laws, the case explores two sides of the same coin: at a time and in a state where same-sex marriage is illegal, one official decides to defy the law; at a time and in a state where it is legal, another chooses to refuse to obey. The case asks students to consider if and when official disobedience-the refusal by a public official, acting in an official capacity, to follow the law-is justified.

On June 16, 2013, the Irish government sponsored the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, which proposed to allow abortions when doctors determined the procedure was necessary to save the life of the mother. The bill was introduced in Ireland's House of Representatives to much debate. Some Representatives who were opposed to the bill felt that that they should be entitled to vote their conscience rather vote the party line. The consequences of voting against the party were considerable: Representatives who did so would be immediately ousted from the party. Creighton voted against the bill and was automatically expelled from Fine Gael, her parliamentary party; the Government won the vote, 130 to 24. When asked about Fine Gael's pre-election commitment to keep abortion illegal, she said, "I know in my own mind we made a clear commitment before the last election. I repeated that commitment, I meant it and held it sincerely. This legislation is a breach of that commitment." The case is designed to facilitate discussion of the differences between the trustee and the delegate models of representation and an evaluation the relative merits of each as they pertain to definitions of 'good representation.' Students will formulate a personal definition of 'good representation,' identifying those characteristics specifically tied to representative 'quality.' Students should be able to analyze the interaction between intensity of preferences and public (or personal) assessment of representative 'quality.' Through the case and the class discussion, students will learn to develop personal frameworks and metrics for assessing the work of legislators in representative democracies; appropriately apply these frameworks and metrics to existing situations; demonstrate the capacity to engage in systematic comparative analyses of both normative and empirical information; and, justify arguments using articulately crafted, evidence-based ideas.

This case describes how community leaders in Amman, Jordan used a community organizing framework to launch and manage a major campaign, 6 Minutes, to encourage residents to commit time to reading for pleasure. Using Marshall Ganz's framework for building civic leadership capacity, a local service organization, Ruwwad, based in the urban Amman community of Jabal Al Natheef, organized and coached hundreds of participants, encountering many challenges and milestones along the way-from cultural obstacles to community celebrations. Even before the 6 Minutes campaign concluded, the organizers were eager to launch a new campaign, noting that the success of 6 Minutes laid a firm foundation for the next campaign, building leadership, organizing power and capacity. At the end of the case, the protagonists question how to best apply the learning from 6 Minutes to their next campaign.