Evaluation of the Social and Economic Impact of the Project SPRAR “Era Domani”
Project status: concluded
Description
Among the approaches that can be carried out to report and to assess the results of social-interest activities , there is the so-called micro-assessment that is intended in terms of project evaluation. The evaluation is applied to individual projects initiated by one or more organizations, with the aim of understanding their quantitative and qualitative impacts on the local society and on stakeholders, as well as their heterogeneous results achieved. The interest in social impact assessment applied to single projects has become even more significant in recent years in order to both explain the usage of public and private financing and report transparently about the social impact of specific project on the community.
With these reporting purposes and with the aim of verifying impacts and changes generated by a specific project, started in 2017 the collaboration between Euricse and the Social Cooperative ‘Nuova Ricerca Agenzia Res’. The project has been aimed to the social impact assessment of the new project proposed by the social cooperative and devoted to the social assistance and the social inclusion of immigrants within the territory of Fermo (an Italian province in Centre Italy). The research can be included in the Euricse practice of applying the ImpACT model to specific organizations and projects. But it also meets the broader theme of the Social Impact Assessment of Third sector entities recently promoted by the Reform of the Third Sector, which provides for “qualitative and quantitative assessment on the short, medium and long-term effects of the activities carried out on the reference community with respect to the target identified” and which thus requires to identify appropriate indicators and evaluation indexes.
Objectives
The general objective of the research activity was to evaluate the outputs, the otucomes and and the economic and social impact generated by the Sprar project called “Era Domani” realized in the city of Fermo thanks to the collaboration between the municipality of Fermo and the social cooperative Nuova Ricerca Agenzia Res. The project aims to offer services to immigrants in an opt-in approach to autonomy.
Specifically, the evaluation process enabled the social cooperative to answer the reporting needs of its activities towards the relevant stakeholders, improving the content and transparency of information and aiming at reporting and assessing the main traits of and the main added value produced by a project that is not simply devoted to the social inclusion of migrants but also to their inclusion into local families.
By adapting the methodologies borrowed from the ImpACT approach developed by Euricse in the assessment of the social impact of third sector entities, the research allowed to develop specific tools for data collection related to the project which can be used in the future by the cooperative for its accounting and evaluation process and in order to analyse trends and benchmark for its strategic planning .
More specifically, the aim of the project was to identify the appropriate quantitative and qualitative indicators and indexes able to assess the achieved results and the impacts generated, but also to be used in the evaluation of the efficiency of the project (by looking at the relationship between resources employed and services and outputs produced) and in the effectiveness of the project (in terms of achieved goals, well-being generated, and quality of services produced and social inclusion generated). The analysis also collected information on the short- and on the medium- and long-term changes, both on the beneficiaries of the service, on the network of stakeholders involved, and on the local community as a whole.
Main results
The results achieved from this project are given by: (i) the development of specific tools based on the ImpAct methodology proposed by Euricse, but specific to the characteristics of the project “Era Domani”, and (ii) to provide the cooperative with furst examples of impact assessment and a brief reporting on its activity.
Publications
internal reporting
Partner
Nuova Ricerca Agenzia Res (social cooperative)