Femina Hip
- Project partners: Femina Hip ConnectGo
- Project location:
Tanzania - Project type:
Evaluative SROI - Sector:
International Development - Publication year: 2021
Image © Femina Hip
Sustainable Development goals
About the project
Femina Hip provides edu-tainment to young people; runs extracurricular “Fema clubs”; and offers transformative life skills training and entrepreneurship education that supports young people to know themselves better and to self-organize as active citizens. This study seeks to understand the difference, and how much difference Femina is making. It will be used to inform strategic conversations within Femina and to spread a shared understanding of value throughout the organisation; and by doing so to better maximise the social value it creates.
Headlines
For every $1 invested in Femina Hip there is a social return of $23. Second generation outcomes include students and teacher mentors seeing and acting on opportunities for self-employment or entrepreneurship that supports their self-reliance; and more equitable treatment of girls, reporting of violations and seeking redress for victims of violence.
Learnings and challenges
Learnings
Teacher mentors contribute the equivalent of US$2 million annually to Fema clubs. They only net $1.9 million in value to themselves, which is less than that obtained by Femina alumni. Given that teacher mentors become better teachers as a result of their contact with Femina it would make sense for Femina to invest in formalizing the professional development opportunities that they offer so that teachers’ career progression took account of these inputs.
The value being created for Femina alumni is substantial at $3 million. This is significant because of the numbers being reached (estimated 27,000 annually), because the outcomes endure over time and because currently Femina has little systematic engagement with their alumni. This group presents a real programmatic opportunity to create more value and it may be an oversight not to have mentioned them as a target audience in Femina’s new strategic plan.
This study puts a financial proxy on the value of what is essentially a volunteer programme that operates in school. Femina will always need to make the case for the value of volunteering to people who see it as a distraction from academic study. This study uses the language of money and the survey uses stakeholders’ language to describe and explain the value of volunteerism. Femina should leverage the analysis done here as it moves forward in forging relationships with new stakeholder groups (Local Government Authorities, parents, Regulatory Authorities).
Challenges
Various challenges had to be addressed when applying the SROI principles, as shown in the table below. These challenges were successfully addressed by collecting additional data and re-calculating the value created based on that new data.
| Principle | Process learnings |
|---|---|
| Involve stakeholders | Initially it was a challenge to involve all material stakeholders, and at first the stakeholder involvement was not consistent throughout the process. |
| Understand what changes | Identifying unintended and negative outcomes was a challenge initially. |
| Value the things that matter | There is a question about the appropriateness of using financial proxies derived from UK work on measuring well-being. However - this is a challenge in countries where less work has been done on wellbeing valuation. |
| Only include what is material | The scope of study does not include outcomes related to Heads of School, parents, Local Government Authorities - all of whom might be considered material stakeholders. |
| Do not over-claim | It was a challenge to get accurate data about the reach of the edutainment channels and about the long-term outcomes for former Fema clubbers. A prudent estimate for both has been adopted. |
| Be transparent | Additional key monitoring tools need to be put in place in the future to better evidence claims about the value, duration, and attribution of outcomes. |
| Verify the result | Stories of change are a useful starting point from which to go through this exercise, but they are partial. This means that verifying the results in the future and then updating them takes on added importance |
Social Value Matters 2020
Kate McAlpine presented the results of the study as part of a session on Social Value and Child Protection in East Africa at Social Value Matters 2020. The video is below.
Using the Results
An orientation process took place, so that the Femina Hip Management Team were comfortable with the SROI methodology
The feedback loop needs to be closed by sharing the results of this study with stakeholders; and by further consulting with them about any shifts in programming.
Accreditation for the study will be sought from Social Value UK.
Consider whether Femina Hip should maintain social accounts alongside their financial accounts.
Consult Heads of School, parents and Local Government Authorities about future programme directions as they will become material stakeholders under Femina’s new strategic plan.
Methodology
The study followed the evaluative SROI methodology. The main features of the methodology are outlined below.
- 41 stories of significant change collected from students, teacher mentors and former clubbers (young people).
- Descriptive analysis undertaken to identify outcomes and to provide a provisional quantification of the social value created.
- After a sensitivity analysis tested the validity of the provisional social value quantification, a decision was made to address the limitations of the study.
- A survey was used to further seek out the stories of more stakeholders. This combined qualitative and quantitative data, asking stakeholders to write a story of their contact with Femina, the type of change they had experienced, the duration of that change, its attribution to Femina, how much would have happened anyway and whether the change happened at the expense of others.
- The outcomes were re-considered, re-articulated and the value of them re-calculated to ensure that Femina is not over-claiming impact.
- Deadweight was estimated based on respondents’ response to the question “would the change that you described in your story have happened without Femina?” 16% responded that “yes, it would”, and 84% responded “no”. There is no clear pattern in the data related to deadweight by outcome, so the deadweight has been calculated as 16% across all outcomes.
- Displacement was estimated based on responses to the question “to what extent do you think that the benefits you received were at the expense of other people.” 21% responded ‘a lot’ and 25% responded ‘somehow’. Again, there is no clear pattern in the stories related to displacement by outcome, so it has been calculated as 46% across all outcomes.
- Attribution was estimated based on responses to the question “How much of the change you experienced was due to Femina?” No-one responded that none of the change was due to Femina. 53% said that some of it was due to Femina and 47% said that all of the change was due to Femina. To calculate the % of change attributed to others, a simple weighted average calculation was used. The response characterised as “some of the change” was allocated a median percentage score of 49% (within the range 1% – 99%). Therefore, the weight given to this response is 2,597 (49 x 53) and the weight given to the response “All” is 4,700 (47 x 100). The simple weighted average of attribution to Femina is therefore (2597 + 4700)/100 = 73%. Therefore 27% is assumed to be attributable to others.
- Calculation of impact was calculated based on the number of times that the outcome was mentioned by survey respondents and then extrapolated to the wider stakeholder group. This gives a total impact value per outcome. From this total the percentages of deadweight, attribution and drop-off are deducted; leaving us with the overall impact of the outcomes.
- Only the value of the well-defined outcomes that ultimately emerged was calculated to avoid double counting.
- Respondents to the survey consistently said the duration of change would last up to five years.
- The financial proxy of Tanzanian salaries (median, for teachers and for non-profit workers) were used to quantify the value of outcomes related to improved employability prospects. Those outcomes related to improvements in wellbeing; for which there are no datasets of financial proxies in Tanzania have been valued based on the work done by Fujiwara et al[1] to measure wellbeing in the UK. The value of each of these proxies was reduced by 50.11%. The amount of reduction was based on a comparison between the consumer price index (including rent) in Tanzania and in the United Kingdom[2].
[1] Trotter L, Vine J, Leach M, Fujiwara, D, 2014; Measuring the Social Impact of Community Investment: A Guide to using the Wellbeing Valuation Approach.
[2] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&country2=Tanzania
Further information
Links
Contact details
