Evaluation of Work 4 Progress
The La Caixa Foundation funded Work 4 Progress to create employment in developing countries. As part of this project, Development Alternatives and la Caixa established an action and learning platform to scale up innovative enterprise and livelihood development solutions for boosting job creation in India and the rest of the world.
This pilot program employed a multi-staged operational methodology to unleash entrepreneurial energy through social innovation and strengthen the entrepreneur through a robust support system.
Sambodhi adopted a two-pronged research framework that involved a formative developmental evaluation (DE) component and a summative evaluation (SE) component to answer these key questions:
- What has the program achieved so far?
- Have the processes been effective and relevant?
While the DE responded to the effectiveness and provided input on the modifications of the processes, the SE delineated the outcomes attributable to the program.
A theory of change in the program was developed to actualize DE, which all stakeholders supported. SE also adopted a mixed-method approach with larger stress on quantitative techniques. This component also adopted quasi-experimental designs with counterfactual and difference-in-difference estimates. The project was operational in 30 interventions and ten comparison villages. From within this catchment, 60 enterprises were selected.
For DE, qualitative assessments were conducted using focus group discussion (FGD) and In-depth Interviews (IDIs) with critical stakeholders to understand the implementation process, its effectiveness, and its relevance. For SE, a structured tool was developed for the targeted sample, and IDIs were conducted to develop case studies for the intervention.