Yearly evaluation and impact evaluation of a programme to foster social inclusion in Tuscany

Title Nessuno escluso – Supporting Communities in Tuscany

Location Florence (Le Piagge, Campi Bisenzio, Prato, Empoli)

Duration September 2017 – April 2022

Project Leader Oxfam Italia

Partners Cooperativa sociale Macramè, Cooperativa Il Piccolo Principe, Metropolis, Associazione Cieli Aperti, ASEV, Unione dei Comuni Empolese Valdelsa, Cooperativa Pane & Rose, Comune di Prato

Funding Burberry Foundation

 

Context

The area including Prato, Firenze, Campi Bisenzio and Empoli represents an attractive and vibrant place, an intersection of culture and international flows. However, this is an area full of inconsistencies, mainly on the job market, access to the services, educational poverty and social inclusion.

For these reasons, the Burberry Foundation invested in actions to contrast social exclusion through a programme led by Oxfam. The programme aims at strengthening the community centres by introducing community facilitators and promoting school mentoring and inclusive education activities, in the areas of Florence (notably the neighbourhood of Le Piagge), Prato, Empoli e Campi Bisenzio. Thanks to the programme activities it will be possible to involve 200.000 beneficiaries.

General objective

The yearly evaluation aims at understanding the main results triggered by the programme, analyzing its relevance, effectiveness and sustainability, while assessing the progress in achieving the indicators.

The impact evalaution and the SROI analysis that will be carried at the end will assess which changes were genereted in the beneficiaries’ communities and the social return on the investment generated in the 4 years of implementation of the project.

What have we done?

ARCO’s Researchers will carry out 4 yearly evaluations respectively in April 2019-2020-2021-2022 , which will be followed by an impact evaluation and an analysis of the social return on investments in April 2022.

Every year, between February and March, Researchers visit the different areas, meet the partners, project staff, local institutions and a sample of beneficiaries.The field visits combined with the participatory methodologies, with the quantitative data collected throughout the project and with the desk analysis of the project documentations allow to estimate the results.

Therefore, the analysis is built on 4 main methodological components:

  • Analysis of achievement of programme output-outcome-impact indicators against the targets,
  • Use of mixed methods: qual and quant
  • Use of a participatory approach through the direct involvement of the main stakeholders in the evaluation activities.
  • The analysis of the social return on investment (SROI analysis)

 

Read more on our M&E and Impact Evaluation Unit