For project descriptions, see Areas of Expertise.
Mary, Janet, and I worked very closely on the Foundation’s 2010 learning and evaluation report “Beyond Survival: Helping Women Transition Out of Poverty.” This five year initiative involved various stakeholders including multiple funders, service providers and program participants. Mary was able to listen and work well with all stakeholders and took a collaborative approach to the entire project. The result was a fabulous report that highlights effective practices in women’s community economic development, informs policy and builds awareness of women’s journey out of poverty. We selected Eko Nomos as our evaluators because of their experience in the area of poverty reduction, their asset based approach to evaluation and learning and their strong understanding of women’s self-employment and social purpose enterprise development.
Women’s Centre of York Region worked with Eko Nomos on our 2013 Assessing Our Impact project. We wanted to build on our work with the Sustainable Livelihoods framework and develop clear tools to assess women’s readiness for programs and evaluate impact of programs. It was so helpful to work with a consultant with the knowledge and experience to guide us through some challenging conversations and engage all staff in developing theories of change and identifying tangible and realistic program outcomes. We have now piloted our post program evaluation tool with women with very encouraging feedback and look forward to better understanding the impact of our work.