How do you quantify the impact of PeacePlayers?
Anyone who has the opportunity to witness a PeacePlayers-Cyprus twinning or tournament sees the obvious impact it is making on the ground. But often times people ask me what kind of real impact is PPI-CY making? How do you quantify a high-five or a new friendship between kids from an ethnically divided island? PPI-CY has begun to tackle this complex problem with its new measurement and evaluation system on Salesforce.
PPI-CY can track how many hours of programming it is providing to Cypriot children month to month
The first step was to enter in information about all children currently participating in the PPI-CY program, a daunting task, especially considering many children come from rural villages and are not the easiest kids to get a hold of. But when its all said and done, PPI-CY now has a clearer understanding of the scope of its reach across Cyprus. We now have an accurate record of the growth of the program over the last 3 years, how many kids are participating in our program month to month, not to mention their age, gender and hometown.
PPI-CY can track its growth year to year
But the biggest challenge moving forward is how to use this new wealth of information to improve our programming. For instance we can now see how many hours each child is spending interacting with children from the other community. Because Cyprus is a physically divided island, getting the children together is our greatest challenge, and our greatest opportunity to create positive change. By understanding better how our children are spending time together, we have a better opportunity to improve and broaden the scope of our program in the coming years.
