Spazio Donna, evaluation of the projects to foster women empowerment and contrast gender-based violence

Title Spazio Donna

Location Napoli, Roma, Cosenza – Italy

Duration January -December 2021

Partners
  • Roma: Be free Cooperativa Sociale
  • Napoli: Obiettivo Uomo Cooperativa Sociale
  • Cosenza: Movimento Cooperazione Internazionale – Associazione di Promozione Sociale

Funding Fondo di Beneficenza Intesa San Paolo

 

Context

The project Spazio Donna, implement by WeWorld, aims to build and foster spaces for socialization activities in multiple Italian cities. These spaces are thought to develop and strengthen the empowerment of women, create  a community of active, participatory, collaborative and non-discriminatory citizens and contrast gender-based violence through prevention and risk reduction.

Spazio Donna is currently active in the cities of Milan, Brescia, Bologna, Rome, Naples and Cosenza. Funding from the Intesa San Paolo Charity Fund has covered 3 of these Spaces in Rome, Naples and Cosenza.

In each city, the Women’s Space is managed by WeWorld’s partners, namely:

  • Rome – San Basilio: Be Free Cooperativa Sociale,
  • Naples – Scampia: “Obiettivo Uomo del Mezzogiorno”
  • Cosenza: “Mo.C.I.” Mo.C.I.” -Movimento Cooperazione Internazionale

In the 12 months of the project, many women have been involved in theses Spaces, participating in psycho-physical wellbeing activities, training and work orientation activities, cultural activities, or have benefited from parenting support services.

 

General Objective

To prove the evidence of the project results, the M&E and Impact Evaluation Unit was involved to estimate the effectiveness of the Spaces in increasing the empowerment of the beneficiaries, as well as to analyse the degree to which the project met the OECD-DAC (2019) criteria of relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability.

 

Our contribution

The socio-economic-political context of the three cities in which the project is implemented is very different, and for these reasons the activities of each Space are implemented in a way that adapts to the context and needs of the beneficiaries, while maintaining a certain degree of uniformity in the actions and methodologies of intervention.

The evaluation methodology was therefore designed in such a way as to capture in all three projects the changes generated in the beneficiaries and main stakeholders, combined with the desk analysis of the documents produced within the project and the quantitative analysis of the data collected through the questionnaires administered to staff and women.

For the purpose of evaluation, Researchers privileged a participatory and qualitative methodology. In particular, they conducted semi-structured interviews and structured focus group discussion, in order to estimate the impact of the project on women’s empowerment starting from the perceptions of the beneficiaries and the degree of attribution of change associated with the different actions of the project.

Given the complexity of evaluating an empowerment process and in order to make the evaluation as standardised as possible, Researchers developed a Theoretical Framework on Empowerment on the basis of they elaborated the questionnaires. The success of each intervention was therefore measured on the basis of the degree of achievement of the empowerment dimensions identified as objectives for the beneficiaries.

Spazio Donna è un germoglio: qualcosa dove tutto può fiorire, e mi sono chiesta se potevo fiorire anche io. Ci ho provato, e sono fiorita.

Beneficiaria di Spazio Donna Cosenza

 

Read more on our M&E and Impact Evaluation Unit