Our Impact
90%
of young people report that coming to The Avenues helps them stay active and healthy.
1,185
young people (aged 8-18) came to Avenues, up 7% on 2023-24.
13,658
Total attendance of sessions over a 12 month period.
82%
of young people said that coming to The Avenues helps them feel more comfortable in their skin.
94%
of young people attending one of our vocational courses wished to further develop their new skill.
59
young people have gained their SEG Awards Level 1 Certificate in Exploring Youth Work at The Avenues Youth Project
Monitoring and evaluation
The Avenues is committed to providing consistent, effective and robust measurement of the impact of our work to ensure we deliver projects that achieve our outcomes for young people, and provide high quality reporting to our funders. We aim to do this with a light touch so not to detract from young people’s enjoyment of visiting The Avenues.
At every session we register attendance to build a pattern of usage. Youth workers make observations and record individuals’ progress in reports at the end of each session. This information is uploaded to our online monitoring system and is used to report course progress and completion, and to build case studies.
We have also adopted a range of feedback tools for young people, including questionnaires, group discussions, surveys, votes, youth meetings and testimonials from young people and parents.
Since 2019 we have employed an in-house Impact and Evaluation Manager, who has been working with an external consultancy to engrain and improve our methods and processes.
We continue to invest in this area and our team captures data via tablets and smartphone questionnaires to improve our efficiency.
Our Theory of Change
In early 2020 we produced The Avenues’ Theory of Change, an evaluation framework that outlines our key objectives for young people, and the indicators we can use to track progress against these desired outcomes.
We devised this by looking at what is happening in our area in terms of living conditions and social pressures, what young people need in terms of skills and opportunities, and what young people want and enjoy doing out of school. We then looked at our capabilities and what we want to achieve as an organisation.
The following simplified chart explains The Avenues’ Theory of Change:
