Learning through evaluation on Team v

We’re proud to be working together with CFE to evaluate the impact of Team v, our network powered by young people who are socially aware and want to change things for the better.

Team v gives 18-25 year old volunteers the chance to change the world, one campaign at a time. The principal aim of the evaluation is to explore the impact of the programme on both young people and communities, and enable us all to develop an understanding of young people’s ability to lead social change.

Our latest evaluation report from Team v relates to year 1 of implementing a brand new programme and method of delivery at vInspired. By evaluating the first year of Team v, we wanted to learn not only what worked well, but what aspects of the programme we needed to further develop in order to ensure a high-quality, sustainable programme for youth volunteering and leadership.Since receiving this report in September 2012, and earlier interim reports in April and July 2012, we have taken a number of actions at vInspired to respond to the evaluation and ensure that we improve the programme in year 2.

The key learnings

The interim evaluation demonstrates that the programme has had an impact on their personal development, skills needed to effect social change and their social capital. Whilst the full programme evaluation will conclude and report in September 2013, there have been some promising emerging findings which have helped us shape the programme in Year 2 and beyond:

• A fourth Youth Network Co-ordinator has been added to the delivery staff team, which has enabled us not only to scale up the programme considerably in terms of leader numbers, but also ensures we can continue to support young people of a range of abilities and previous experience levels on the programme.

• Eight “mentors” have been recruited from our alumni of young people on programme in Year 1, which will provide additional peer mentoring support to Team v leaders.

• An additional month has been added to the start of the programme. This has enabled Team v leaders more time to start recruiting their local volunteer teams before the campaigns start in October.

• A new training day was introduced at the start of the programme which teaches Team v Leaders how to recruit, lead, and motivate a team of volunteers. We have also given leaders extra time in the programme to prepare and recruit their team.

• We have extensively reviewed the Personal Development Grant guidance and communicated the purpose of the grant more clearly, and earlier on in the programme to avoid disappointment or confusion about the use of this later on.

For more detailed information on how we have developed the programme in Year 2, please see the full Year 1 Evaluation Report.

What's next?

Year 2 of Team v is well underway, with leaders already part way through their second campaign, ‘Make Time For Your Mind’. If you want to find out more about Team v, or volunteer with our leaders this year head to vinspired.com.

Or keep up to date via latest tweets from Team v and CFE.