What is it?: A chance to explore some of the most significant longer
term changes for your service users and what might have caused them.
How can it be useful for a street-connected young
people focussed organisation to measure impact?
This is a tool you could use with a variety of stakeholders to try to understand which
changes they valued most and why they believe that they happened.
This tool is designed to explore identified significant changes. It
is trying to draw out the causal factors that led to the change
happening in different ways.
The tree of change is a group activity that can explore one or more changes that a
group of stakeholders identify as having been important. They place the change/s
they wish to explore into a fruit on a tree and then explore the causal factors using;
This can help the organisation to analyse and think about
whether they are working in the way that is or will have the
most impact or not.
Roots: these are the environment factors that were needed to make the
change happen.
Water buckets: these are the people who contributed to make the change
happen.
Birds: these are potential risks to stop the change or reverse the change from
happening.
Leaves: these are the ideas to promote further positive change in this
direction.
If possible you can do the tree of change exercise with different
groups of stakeholders i.e. family members of the young people
as well as the young people themselves, to get a different
perspective on which changes have been observed and
perceived causes.
.
How can it been adapted to help street-connected children to
participate and engage with it?
This exercise is visual and creative to help to make it more appealing and interesting
for stakeholders to want to take part. It is also designed in such a way to encourage
participation from every group member to contribute ideas and to make group
decisions around which is most significant as long as the facilitator ensures
inclusivity.
If some members of the group cannot write, they can still take part if someone else
can scribe their ideas for them.
Some points to think about:
This tool works with small focus groups so you need to think
about how to split your stakeholders in a useful way to have
useful information to analyse, for example one group of
relatives of children who have successfully gone through the
programme and another of group relatives of children who
dropped out would be a useful comparison.
Think about how the stakeholders are selected for the focus
group to try to reduce bias where possible. Consider carefully
who is best to facilitate the session as that might influence
answers where people will tell them what they think they want
to hear if they feel in debt to them for support received or
worried about the potential of future support.
Before the session starts: You must decide if you are going to use the pre-designed
roots, leaves, buckets and birds that are available with this toolkit or design your own.
Resources needed:
Flipchart paper and coloured pens.
Print outs of the Impact tree roots, leaves, buckets
and birds (cut out) and something to stick them
with.
Several small pieces of plain paper to draw on.
A method you could use to facilitate the session:
1. Start by explaining what you are trying to do and set ground rules i.e. that every idea needs to be listened to and considered.
2. Choose a timeframe that will be useful for the evaluation session to focus on i.e. it could be the length of time that you have
worked with the children of the parental group that you are working with.
3. On a flipchart draw a circle with change and the agreed timeframe inside it. Ask the group to think about the big changes that
have occurred in their lives or the lives of their children in that time. Make sure they consider both positive and negative
changes. These could be related to housing, health, education and skills, self-confidence, wealth etc.
4. Get everyone to share their ideas in a circle (go round the group one by one to make sure everyone is heard). If the group is
literate they could write answers individually on post it notes first. As the ideas are shared group them by theme in offshoots
from the main circle of change. Explore if the changes have been positive or negative for everyone in the group.
5. Ask the group to vote which 1-3 change themes have been most important to them. They can do this through placing a dot
next to the one/s they are voting for or you reading out the list to them and vote by raising hands or discussion to reach a
group consensus.
6. Request 1 person draw a big tree covering the whole flipchart and 1-3 others to draw a line outline picture of a fruit i.e. a
mango, apple and orange. Explain it doesn’t have to be a work of art just a visual representation. Write the top identified
changes into a different fruit each and stick onto the tree.
7. Have printed copies of the templates of the roots, buckets, bird and leave or the
ones you drew yourself and the way you plan to stick them on. Go through the
meaning of the symbols with the group before starting this part of the exercise.
Then go symbol by symbol. This is the recommended order to explore them in. It
is recommended to explore each area so that everyone has contributed and the
energy and ideas for that focus area seem to be coming to an end.
- Roots: these are what was needed in the environment to make this happen (i.e.
places like school, home).
- Water buckets: these are who contributed to make the change happen (i.e.
people like a teacher, parent).
- Birds: these are potential risks to stop the changes or reverse the change from
happening.
Relatives of children who were on the streets of
- Leaves: these are the ideas to promote further positive change in this direction.
Agra, India and who accessed CHETNA’s services,
8. Get participants to stick the pictures onto the big tree as you go along.
create their Impact Tree in May 2015.
9. When you have finished do a recap of the key points that were brought out to
check there are no additional points and nothing that needs further discussion to reach consensus.
10. Explain how the information will be analysed and used. Let them know if they will be able to get their own copy of it and if
so when and how that will be.
Recording the data: Take a photo of the Impact tree at the end of the session. Make sure all the writing can be clearly seen.