Mapping the impact of social empowerment

Thursday, 9th February

Since my last post on impact mapping I have continued to work with the impact map for a men’s health service.  More recently I have been analysing my notes from the semi-structured interviews.  I am loving how these findings are enriching my understanding of the pathways from activities to outcomes.

One theme that keeps coming up is that the organisation’s activities makes you think. This is what men of all walks of life are telling me how they felt after being exposed to this group.  On the face of it that doesn’t sound so strong.  Afterall, it is pretty hard to imagine that someone can be alive and not ‘think’ to some degree.  But coupled with very moving stories I have heard of people who were averted from suicide, had the prostate check they had been putting off or ‘moved on’ from the grief of a bad season, it makes you think sounds like a very powerful mechanism to self-empowerment and resilience.

It is building a common experience from so many different heartfelt stories that I love about qualitative data.  Your informants know the power of the programs you are evaluating.  Your contribution as an evaluator is to listen and to aggregate them.