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Evaluating Programs For Youth

EMpower Tools for Monitoring And Evaluation

EMpower – The Emerging Markets Foundation with Bonnie Shepard, Consultant, 2017

Monitoring and evaluating youth-focused programs can seem/be challenging for many reasons such as:

  • Adolescence is a time of growth and change anyhow so it may not be clear what is due to program participation.
  • Young people are highly mobile so it may be hard to do follow-up
  • The benefits of program participation may not be evident immediately but longer term, and thus harder for most programs to measure.
  • Organizations may not have funding or specialized staff capacity for evaluation.

Despite challenges, evaluating and deliberate learning from program experience is vital to understand if they are making a difference to young people. Programs and funders need to understand if desired changes for youth take place, and to adjust accordingly. Effective advocacy for shifts in policy or resources requires data. Solid program experience and evidence of results is needed before contemplating scaling youth-focused approaches.

Effective monitoring and evaluation is built into programs at the beginning by having a clear program model, outlining key assumptions and expected results (a “theory of change”). Therefore, EMpower discusses planned monitoring and evaluation with grantees during proposal submission. To assist with such and to de-mystify evaluation, we developed user-friendly tools and guidance on specific aspects of youth development that many EMpower grantee partners seek to measure – see specific links by topic area below.

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Basic guide to program evaluation

EMpower – The Emerging Markets Foundation (with Julie Solomon, consultant), 2010

This guide is intended to provide some basic definitions, tools, and methods related to program evaluation. Topics include: reasons to evaluate your work, types of evaluation, and timing of an evaluation. The guide also includes tools for collecting data as well as tips on conducting focus groups, surveys, and in-depth interviews.

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A Toolkit for Monitoring and Evaluating Programs For Adolescent Girls

EMpower – The Emerging Markets Foundation, 2016

This toolkit was borne out of EMpower’s work with our seven grantee partners in Maharashtra who are a part of the Learning Community. Over the past two years, our grantee partners shared their challenges, insights and experiences during the Learning Community and helped in bringing together, promising practices and best strategies to develop tools for effective monitoring and evaluation of adolescent girls programs.

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Strengthening Organizations

Fundraising resources for our Grantee Partners

Fundraising resources for our Grantee Partners

As we continue to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 with all of you, and the specific needs of your organizations, we are hearing that many of you are increasing your fundraising efforts. To support you in these efforts, we have put together some recommendations that could be helpful. We have also gathered a curated set of fundraising resources with links below.

EMpower’s top five recommendations for fundraising during COVID-19

1) Review your donor database and the donors you had expected gifts to come in from.

2) Revisit your strategic plan, budgets and portfolio to see what is feasible.

3) Contact your donors and be transparent about the situation. Do not only contact major donors , but also smaller donors and the ones who say they can’t give right now. Stewardship is key.

4) Ask donors whether they would allow for restricted funding to become unrestricted to allow for more flexible allocation of funds.

5) Be creative – use all the available tools.

FUNDRAISING RESOURCES:

Network for Good COVID-19 resources: https://www.networkforgood.com/covid-19-resources/

Making sure your donors stay engaged: https://www.hubbub.net/blog/ways-to-keep-your-supporters-engaged-during-covid-19

10 things fundraisers can do from home: https://npengage.com/nonprofit-fundraising/10-things-fundraisers-can-do-from-home-coronavirus/

How to fundraise during a pandemic: https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/voices/fundraising-during-the-covid-19-pandemic.html

The top 5 things you can do as a fundraiser during the COVID-19 outbreak (podcast): https://spoti.fi/2V3Pmei

Fundraising in the reality of COVID-19 (podcast): https://www.pursuant.com/podcast/fundraising-in-the-reality-of-covid-19/

Tips on fundraising during COVID-19 and ways to keep your funders engaged: https://bit.ly/2RexHPQ and https://bit.ly/2UMHXkD.

Resources for Working with Youth During COVID-19

The Art of Fundraising: A Practical Workbook of Tools and Strategies

EMpower – The Emerging Markets Foundation

This EMpower-curated toolkit provides concepts, tips, resources and exercises to help small organizations understand more about fundraising, determine the most effective approaches given their capacity and context, and gain concrete ideas to strengthen their fundraising strategies and tactics.

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Livelihoods: Preparing Youth To Earn A Decent, Dignified Income

It’s her business: A handbook for preparing young, at-risk women to become entrepreneurs

EMpower – The Emerging Markets Foundation, 2010

This is a practical resource for organizations seeking to start or strengthen entrepreneurship programs for young, at-risk women. It outlines the essential components of successful entrepreneurship programs, discusses common challenges and considerations, and provides other useful tips and resources.

For use with young women in their late teens or early twenties.

The toolkit discusses the following topics:

  • key components of an entrepreneurship program
  • questions to consider when developing trainings on entrepreneurship
  • deciding what product or service to offer
  • marketing
  • developing a business plan
  • financial literacy
  • program monitoring and evaluation
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Shattering Stereotypes: Nontraditional Job Paths for Young Women

EMpower - The Emerging Markets Foundation, 2015

This resource kit was put together to provide references and easy‐to-use tools and resources for participants in the “Shattering Stereotypes Learning Exchange on Nontraditional Jobs for Young Women”. This Learning Exchange, which took place in January 2015, brought together select EMpower grantee partners and other experts working to position and prepare girls and young women for jobs usually reserved for males.

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Designing Programs for Adolescent Girls

Making the Most of Mentors: Recruitment, Training, and Support of Mentors for Adolescent Girl Programming

Population Council (2019)

Mentors are an important part of many effective programs for girls, yet little information is available about the practical aspects of developing and supporting a successful mentor cadre.

This toolkit is designed to be practical and user-friendly for program planners, practitioners, mentor trainers, and mentors themselves. It includes insights from years of Population Council experience, pulling together lessons, tips, and specific tools that can be adapted and used to find, train, monitor, support, and evaluate mentors. Inside the toolkit you will find:

  • Experiences from the Population Council’s decades of work in adolescent girl programming
  • Mentor recruitment and training strategies
  • Exercises used by mentors to facilitate program sessions
  • Mentor-retention strategies
  • Monitoring and evaluation tools
  • Models for sustainability

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Community Considerations Guide: More than a backdrop, understanding the role of communities in programming for adolescent girls

Population Council (2019)

The structural and social features of a girl’s community play a critical role in determining what effects programs can achieve.

This Action Guide focuses on five key questions, offers tips on how to find answers, and provides real world examples that demonstrate how to use community-level insights for action for adolescent girls. It was written for people who design, manage, and assess community-based programming.

In communities, girls’ programs often work through “safe spaces” or girls’ clubs, which typically include regular meetings led by a local mentor who delivers information to participants.3 This guide is also relevant to programs that engage girls through other channels, including schools, and it can be useful for community-based programming with boys and parents.

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Putting Girls at the Center - The Girls Advisory Council

The Girls Advisory Council with EMpower - The Emerging Markets Foundation, 2018

The Girls Advisory Council (GAC), an EMpower initiative, is a group of adolescent girl leaders who advise on EMpower’s grantmaking strategy in India and how to best meet the needs of adolescent girls. We recognize that to fully address girls’ needs, strategies to empower girls need to be informed by those affected by the strategies’ implications every day – the girls themselves. This is why we are centering our work around their expertise.

Learn more about the GAC and get to know the adolescent girl Council members in the brochure Putting Girls at the Center: Girls Advisory Council. See details on the key themes recommended by the GAC in order to more effectively help girls succeed, in the document Key Themes to Support Adolescent Girls.

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Empowering Her Voice: Adolescent Girls Learning Communities

EMpower - The Emerging Markets Foundation, 2018

EMpower’s Adolescent Girls Learning Communities are vibrant groups, comprised of local grantee partner organizations, mentors and girls, which nurture and empower girls as leaders. The brochure Empowering Her Voice: Adolescent Girls Learning Communities describes the concept, formation, growth and impact of EMpower’s two Adolescent Girls Learning Communities in India, as well as guidelines for working with adolescent girls.

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The Girl Path

EMpower - The Emerging Markets Foundation, 2015

The purpose of The Girl Path is to identify obstacles that prevent girls from fully participating in youth programs, and then to brainstorm ways that programs can remove, reduce, or otherwise address those barriers.

The Girl Path is currently available in English, Spanish, Hindi and Russian, with imagery options of girls from E/SE Asia, India, Latin America, Europe and Africa.

The Girl Path brochure contains instructions to implement this tool, and the Girl Path Icons are able to be cut out for use.

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Empowering Girls Spaces Infographic

EMpower - The Emerging Markets Foundation

​Girls need spaces in their community to share challenges and potential solutions, to get support and to dream. Create spaces just for girls with this easy infographic! Read on for inspiration…

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Learning from Practice Series: Selecting and Recruiting Adolescent Girls

The World Bank’s Adolescent Girls Initiative, 2013

This is a short handout (4 pages) with key lessons learned from different programs working with adolescent girls in developing countries. Part of The World Bank: Adolescent Girl Initiative website.

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Girl-Centered Program Design: A Toolkit to Develop, Strengthen & Expand Adolescent Girls Programs

Population Council, 2010

This toolkit is meant for anyone interested in designing or running a program specifically for adolescent girls.

It covers:

  • how to decide which girls to include in the program
  • how to conduct needs assessments to better understand their needs
  • how to structure the program: creating safe spaces, recruitment, leadership development and gaining support for the program from parents and the community
  • reaching extremely vulnerable youth
  • program content topics: building girls’ assets, economic strengthening, reproductive health, sexual and gender-based violence
  • monitoring and evaluation.
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Helping Girls Speak Out and Be Heard

Girls’ voices, girls’ priorities: Participatory, innovative tools for capturing girls’ realities and understanding changes in their lives

EMpower - The Emerging Markets foundation (with Andrea Lynch, consultant), 2012

This toolkit brings together user-friendly information and practical, participatory approaches that enable adolescent girl participants in youth-serving organizations to document changes in their lives, and to provide input to shape programs. It contains eight innovative, participatory tools that program staff and girl participants can use to improve the quality of the programs, deepen insight into girls’ realities, and capture and share changes in girls’ lives. *Tools only available in English.

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Sexuality and Gender

The working with young men series, project H

Instituto Promundo with support from IPPF/WHR, PAHO and WHO, 2002

This toolkit is designed to help young men (ages 15 to 24) explore gender roles and relationships, with activities on the following topics:

  • Gender
  • Sexuality
  • Reproductive health
  • Fatherhood and care-giving
  • Violence prevention
  • Emotional health
  • Drug use
  • Preventing and living with HIV and AIDS
Links
It’s All One

International Sexuality and HIV Curriculum Working Group, 2011

This comprehensive, user-friendly resource helps policymakers, curriculum developers, and educators to develop locally appropriate sexuality/HIV education curricula that promote critical thinking about gender and rights. The toolkit has 54 sample activities, all tested and easy to adapt across cultures.

Developed for ages 15 and older, but can be adapted for younger youth. This two-book kit provides essential content on:

  • Gender
  • Human rights
  • Sexual health and sexuality
  • HIV
  • Puberty
  • Reproduction, contraception, and abortion
  • Relationships and communication
  • Intimate-partner violence
  • Advocating for rights
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