Studying the Impact of Women Empowerment Initiatives in Tribal Villages

Originally Written for IDEX at http://commonthreadx.ning.com/blog/women-empowerment-at-tribal-village-impact-evaluation

I guess life's about to take an interesting turn as I plan to take up an Impact Evaluation Study as a part of my IDEX Fellow program. The opportunity has come from Youth for Seva (YFS), which is primarily a platform to provide opportunities for youth who want to take active part in community development. Through this platform, YFS aims to empower youth to become positive change makers who will enable organizations and institutions to work without a vested interest. The goal of YFS is to support schools, NGOs, government hospitals and other organizations in the social sector through volunteers who can help them mitigate some of their shortcomings and challenges. Volunteering is made easy and customized to the individual’s interests and time constraints.

So, my role is to visit all these places where YFS has taken initiatives to empower women and the society and prepare a Social Impact Evaluation Report on these projects. Basically the project would involve analyzing on the impact that the organisation has made on the lives of the women's coming from the rural background. These women's are trained in Bangalore and then placed on the various projects at tribal villages in Karnataka. The projects are running successfully over a period of time. But then there has been no report which speaks about the work going on and the impact it has made. Thus, I will have to travel to these tribal villages, prepare a report which will portray and give the whole idea about the project. Further define the actions which can help better the impact of the project in terms of employ-ability, build life skills and there by look out for the platforms wherein the organisation can provide them with more opportunities to help them build their lives.I would define these objectives to be achieved in 3 different stages as follows:

Data Collection and Research
At the first stage I would be interested to know about the organisation in detail. The structure, business model, different projects they are involved in and every other detail which would give a whole idea of what is the purpose of it's establishment. Further, would be meeting people who could give me a background about the project which I'll be associated and work in the coming days. Also, I would be conducting research about the tribal villages which I'll be visiting so as to be familiar with the culture and norms which will be help me conduct an interview with ease which in turn will enable to me to get all the questions answered to support the impact report. I will also be working on the questionnaire which will help me ensure all the aspects will be covered in preparation of the report.

Field Visit:

Once done with collection of the data and well versed with the organisation and people, I would be required to visit the tribal village and thereby conduct an interview with the ladies there and get all the required information which in detail explains about the entire process which went into making the impact.

Report Submission

After the visit would be working on the tools and procedures which can help me in preparation of the impact report which will give a clear picture about where the project is heading and what will be needed to take a step ahead to enable in impacting more lives.

I'm sure this is going to be a highly challenging and a definitely interesting project.