Monitoring & Evaluation Toolkit

A toolkit to engage young people through sport and physical activity

The Active Essex Foundation in collaboration with StreetGames and Loughborough University are working together to support Community Sports Providers/Local Trusted Organisations (LTOs) to collect and evidence how physical activity and sport is an effective tool for engaging young people to divert them away from criminal behaviours and towards a positive lifestyle with positive outcomes.

Our aim has been to create in partnership with Community Sports Providers/ LTO’s, Youth Criminal Justice agencies and other partners a strong evidence base of proven blueprints and approaches that increase positive life outcomes for vulnerable young people that can be replicated at scale across Southend, Essex and Thurrock and also support a national collection of data.

In order to try and find a way to gather key data and outcomes that can be compared against local and national provisions, demonstrate the effectiveness of sports interventions and how it can influencing youth crime reduction, we have developed a M & E toolkit.

Although we know there is no single, ‘magic’ best way of doing things, we have a number of tips and tools that can help and links to online resources by others. We’ve packaged some of these together to create what we are calling the M&E toolkit’, to help Community Sports Providers/LTOs undertake M&E and demonstrate the impact of their work

The M&E toolkit includes:

Attendance and engagement collection tool
Young person beginning and end surveys
Case study and pen portrait templates
General information and guidance

The information included within the M&E toolkit is not designed to be exhaustive and we are not suggesting that you must use some or all of these resources, unless directly funded by Active Essex Foundation, Active Essex or one of our partners. It is important that the M&E you undertake is ‘right’ for your project and the communities you serve, we hope that some of the information and resources provided will help you in this area of work.

Why is Monitoring & Evaluation Important?

Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) is an essential part of good project management:

It helps to provide feedback and shout about and celebrate progress with everyone involved
It helps to capture learning, identify good practice and support continuous improvement
It helps to show the value and impact of your project to partners, the wider community, funders and others
It is a key component for supporting sustainability as it can strengthen your case for continued, new and/or increased levels of funding.