In November 2008 the Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace commissioned Acton Shapiro to undertake a two-year evaluation of its ‘Survivors for Peace’ programme. The Foundation promotes the understanding, management and non-violent resolution of conflict. ‘Survivors for Peace’ is one of the Foundation’s programmes of work, targeted at people in the United Kingdom who have been bereaved, injured or themselves engaged in acts of politically-motivated violence.
The commission covers evaluation of workshops and courses that are co-ordinated by Survivors for Peace, including:
- Storytelling and dialogue workshops
- Conflict transformation & peace building education
- Advocacy & awareness raising
- Leadership development.
Survivors for Peace has recently been invited to participate in a new expert working group, established by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, to develop non-statutory guidance for local authorities on medium to long-term humanitarian assistance and the findings of the consultation will contribute to this body of knowledge.
The evaluation will use a range of qualitative and quantitative methods to establish the impact of the programme on its participants and the extent to which the programme meets its stated outcomes, including telephone and face-to-face interviews, facilitated discussion groups and analysis of workshop/course feedback questionnaires. The Acton Shapiro team has worked with the programme staff to redesign their feedback questionnaires to make them more outcomes-focused. In addition, we have set up a new database to enable Survivors for Peace to undertake a more sophisticated analysis of their workshop/course feedback and user profiles. This will support the Survivors for Peace team in their work beyond the life of the evaluation.
The findings will be reported through an interim report in 2009 and final report in 2010 to enable continuous improvement of the programme’s workshops and courses and to provide detailed evidence for existing and potential funders.