Week 9

Okay, we're in the nineth week.
This is now, officially, the half-way point to the course. Think about all
you've learned. We've made it through more than half of the book. There is still
much to learn, of course, and then we need to keep putting our learning into
practice. For this blog entry, please list out the seven steps on page 278 and
point out how you are following (or plan to follow) those steps with one of your
projects.

1. Begin by restating each objective as an outcome. The more SMARTE criteria (specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic, time-bound, evaluable) that you have built into your
   objectives, the easier they will be to restate as outcomes.
   


1. Reach more international
   parents by providing a safe, fun place for their kids to play.


2. Increase safety for
   children using the playground.


3. Bring the church playground
   into compliance with suggested guidelines.



2. Look at each outcome to see if
   it answers the “So what?” question. Just because you have some quantifiable
   data does not necessarily mean you have evidence that you achieved your
   goal.
   
   
   
   1. The children’s ministry
      keeps count of numbers (attendance, a rough estimate of
      ethnicity/nationality, male/female children). So we should know within
      a year whether we’re increasing our international contact.
   
   
   2. Safety is a rough goal to
      measure. Perhaps fewer injuries in a given year? I’m not sure the
      church keeps records. Will have to look into that.
   
   
   3. Bringing the playground
      into compliance with suggested guidelines should be easy to measure.


3. For each outcome that does not
   answer the “So what?” question, identify secondary outcomes that would
   provide satisfactory evidence that you have achieved your goal.


4. If the secondary outcomes are
   quantifiable, determine what or how much you would need to attain to
   consider them successful.
   


1. I would think that a 10%
   increase in international children using the playground would be a
   pretty good goal, but I’ll have to ask Lisa how much growth there’s been
   in the last five years so we have something to compare.



5. Determine what kinds of
   monitoring or reporting you will have to do to collect evidence supporting
   the achievement of your primary and secondary outcomes.
   
   
   
   1. The children’s ministry
      keeps records, so that part’s taken care of.
   
   
   2. Compliance with suggested
      playground guidelines won’t have to be monitored except for once, I
      suspect. We will need a maintenance schedule, though.


6. Describe both your primary and
   secondary outcomes, and write a paragraph or two explaining how you will
   monitor and report on them for the Evaluation section.
   


1. The primary outcomes are
   increasing international student visitors to our church. We aim to do
   this via increased children’s facilities, of which playground
   improvement is a major part. The secondary outcome here is increased
   numbers of children being able to use the playground.


2. I think that monitoring and
   reporting will be taken care of as I mentioned above, but we may have to
   increase playground reporting in order to satisfy our funding
   organization. If so, the playground usage would only have to be
   monitored periodically, and might be done by a single person once per
   month. The count could include total number of children, ratio of male
   to female, and an approximation of nationalities represented.


3. Actually, recording the
   nationalities of our visitors would be a sticky problem anyhow, given
   that many are not fluent in English. How do I prepare a survey that is
   universal in nature while still reporting information in such a way as
   to be useful to English speakers?



7. Identify any tasks or
   activities that you would have to perform to monitor or report on your
   secondary outcomes. You can list these tasks in one of two places, either
   under the tasks related to that particular objective or establish a new
   objective dealing specifically with evaluation and list the tasks under the
   new objective.
   
   
   
   1. I thought that I already
      answered this by suggesting a monthly survey of playground activity. In
      retrospect, however, I’ve only begun the process of thinking about it.
      Which days will I survey? Sunday, of course, but there’s a great deal
      of playground activity during the week. And, while I know that the
      children’s ministry keeps track of numbers, I doubt that we have stats
      on past playground usage.
   
   
   2. If I had been really
      ambitious, I might have suggested a grant to simply expand our
      international outreach via parents of children. This “expansion” might
      take the form of having volunteers of various nationalities available
      for watching kids, such that a Chinese mom could know that on certain
      days her children could play with other Chinese children and have a
      volunteer on hand who speaks Chinese (I wonder if our labor is so large
      as to accommodate Mandarin and Cantonese? I doubt it.).