Sustainable Steps Wales Green Careers - Tracking your project’s progress

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  3. Sustainable Steps Wales Green Careers - Tracking your project’s progress

Your project must measure progress as you go

We’re looking to fund projects that will share learning and achievements to raise awareness and influence policy and practice. We want to you to explore and be inquisitive.

To evaluate your project well, you must have support from someone with experience. This can be from your own evaluation team or you may choose to recruit an evaluator. Your evaluator can be a partner for your project or recruited as a consultant.

We may ask for some data to be collected in a consistent way. If so, we will provide guidance in July 2024 to support those invited to stage two.

If you’re awarded a grant at stage two, you’ll work with us and share progress every three months. This is likely to include case studies as well as data.

We’ll ask you to set up to four ‘outcomes’ for your project

By outcomes we mean short descriptions of the changes you are trying to make. They should tell us what difference your project will make.

They should help to achieve our own outcomes which are to:

  • help young people with disabilities and young people from ethnically minoritised communities to get into green careers. This might include skills development, voluntary and paid work experience, and longer-term employment.
  • increase young people’s awareness of green careers
  • make sure employers are set up to support young people with disabilities and young people from ethnically minoritised communities
  • plan to share your learning and achievements to raise awareness and influence policy and practice.  We may ask for some data to be collected in a consistent way. We’ll provide guidance to support help you do this.

You should use indicators to measure your outcomes

Once you have chosen your outcomes you need to set at least one ‘indicator’ for each outcome. An indicator is something you can measure to know that your outcome is happening. They help you measure your progress towards making that change. The indicator is the answer to the question: ‘if a change is happening, how will we know?’.

How to set your indicators

Indicators for outcomes can measure numbers, such as, the number of young people have completed a work placement. They could also measure people's feelings, such as young people being more confident.

For each indicator, you should explain:

  • how much will change – for example ‘500 young people understand green careers’
  • when it will happen – for example ‘by the end of the project’
  • how you will get this information – for example ‘Feedback forms from young people who attended awareness sessions’.

Examples of outcomes and indicators

You could lay out your outcomes and indicators like this:

Outcome: 
More employers are equipped to support young people with disabilities

Indicator: 
90 employers will have received support and gained new skills and feel equipped to support a young person with disabilities.

Timings and indicator levels:

  • By the end of year 1: 10 employers
  • By the end of year 2: 20 employers
  • By the end of year 3: 30 employers
  • By the end of year 4: 60 employers
  • By the end of the project: 90 employers.

An example of how you might get this information

You could:

  • use data from records of training courses employers have attended and one-to-one support received from job coaches
  • do a survey from the employer before they have received support and after receiving support
  • interview a sample of employers as case studies to find out more information.

It is likely you will have several indicators for one or more of your outcomes, for example:

Outcome: 
More young people from ethnically minoritised communities have been supported into green careers.

Indicators: 

  • young people have received advice
  • young people feel more confident
  • young people have more skills
  • young people have completed a work experience
  • young people have completed of a work placement of 6 months or more
  • young people have secured a green job
  • young people are still working in a green job after six months of leaving the project.

An example of how you might get this information

You could:

  • use data from records of each young person who enrols with the service
  • use surveys from young people before they have received support and after receiving support
  • hold focus groups and one to one sessions with young people to find out more information about their experiences
  • seek feedback from young people after they leave the service.

You may need to change how and what you measure

Projects can have unexpected outcomes, desirable or undesirable. You may need to adjust some indicators as you go. You should also collect stories or learning about the changes you see in your project, or that you expected to see but did not happen. Collecting this information will help you and us learn, and will help you improve your project as you go.

Contact us

To get help or advice you can: