Impact assessment for “Sostenere l’Orizzonte”, a four-year cultural welfare project supported by social enterprise Con i Bambini

“Sostenere l’Orizzonte” is a four-year project promoted by Straligut and co-funded by Con i Bambini and Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena. The initiative involves 12 associations, 5 school institutions and a broad and diverse local network to combat educational poverty in the province of Siena. Between 2025 and 2029, the activities – workshops, cultural events, training courses and community welfare initiatives – will reach around 900 children and over 9,000 people across families, schools and the wider educational community.

The project arises from the need to address a situation in which school drop-out rates exceed the regional average, alongside growing demand within educational communities for more effective tools to support young people and their families. The breadth of planned activities calls for a system that can clearly identify changes, determine what is effective and support partners in their ongoing improvement. For this reason, robust evaluation and monitoring support is essential, making it possible to transform data into informed decisions, producing credible evidence and enhancing the project’s overall impact in the areas involved.

BAM! is a project partner responsible for monitoring and impact assessment, employing a methodological framework grounded in the Theory of Change. This approach offers a clear understanding of how and why the intended outcomes are achieved.

BAM! is responsible for designing the evaluation framework, establishing indicators and data collection tools, analysing both qualitative and quantitative data, and reporting findings to the partnership. The methodology is implemented through a collaborative approach, supporting schools, educators and cultural organisations in the collection and interpretation of data.

The evaluation system enables the observation and measurement of not only the short-term effects of the activities on children, families and the educational community, but also their long-term impacts, which are assessed for up to two years following the project’s completion. This comparison makes it possible to more clearly identify the changes that can genuinely be attributed to the intervention, providing robust evidence to inform strategies, improve processes and enhance the project’s impact on the local area.

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