Social Impact Assessment applied to “Progetto Esodo” for Social and Work Integration of Prisoners
Project status: on-going
Description
In the broad research aim of assessing the social impact generated by social activities delivered by Third sector subjects, empirical developments may take different evolutions. Among them, special attention can be devoted to the assessment of the impact generated by projects and social activities devoted to specific target of beneficiaries, which typically receive financial support from financial partners, and which often involve multiple partners and organizations in their carrying out. This is the case of “Progetto Esodo”, launched in 2011 by a network of third sector organizations aimed at promoting social and employment inclusion of prisoners, persons admitted to alternative measures and ex-prisoners. Up to now, the project has involved 1,560 beneficiaries in the provinces of Verona, Vicenza and Belluno, by offering them assistance, housing, training, and job placement.
The research project asks the invitation of the Esodo Foundation to seek collaboration in the planning of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to assess the social impact generated by the Esodo project in these years of activity and which could be used in the future by the Foundation for the annual Social Reporting and for a strategic planning.
Objectives
The research project was launched in 2017 with the aim of building methodologies to assess the social impact of Esodo Project and to experiment their application on the first years of activity with offenders.
Specifically, the research project aims to: (i) evaluate the efficacy of the project and the quality of actions, looking at the well-being generated on users (i.e. prisoners and ex-prisoners); (ii) to evaluate the efficiency of the action in terms of resource usage (mainly Cariverona funding and co-funding by the third sector organizations promoting the services), also seeking to monetize any savings generated by job placement of ex-prisoners; (iii) to assess the social impact generated by the Project by looking to all consequences and changes on the main stakeholders of the project and on the local community/territory. These dimensions align the project reporting objectives with the current legislation on social impact evaluation in the Third sector, which requires to account for “quantitative and qualitative” and “short, medium and long-term” impacts through appropriate indicators.
As an indirect result of the research activity, it is aim of the project to also provide the bodies involved in the realization of the service of monitoring tools and of a proper social reporting scheme to be used both with the financial partners and with communicative purposes towards the community, both with strategic reflection goals on the state and future of the Project and with the actors involved in the network of Fondazione Esodo.
Main results
The main expected result of the research is a report for the social impact assessment and for a transparent accounting of the 6 years of activity produced by Progetto Esodo. The report not only should illustrate the results and changes produced on direct clients and beneficiaries of the Project, but it also should evaluate the actions by identifying territorial differences, indexes and indicators that show gap in Project objectives or improvement margins, levers and interference factors in the achievement of the Project’s goals.
As a second result, ad-hoc methodologies will be offered to the Esodo Foundation after their scientific validation and alignment with both the Impact Value chain logic and the Euricse ImpACT method for the social impact assessment. These tools will enable the Foundation in the future to gather heterogeneous and complementary data and perspectives and to structure the basis for a learning processes and annual strategic planning.
An indirect result of research is individuated in the active involvement of a number of institutional stakeholders in the evaluation process and in the approval of the scientific methodologies proposed by Euricse. These involvement of these stakeholders (mainly exponents of the promoters and lenders of the Esodo Project, the prison institutions involved in the actions and the UEE) will allow to increase their knowledge on the evaluation process and to share the contents of good Project reporting.
Partner
Fondazione Esodo
Cariverona