Entreculturas and Fe y Alegría, with the support of Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID), implemented an agreement to improve educational quality in educational centres in 17 Latin American countries between 2010 and 2015. An external evaluation over 12 months was conducted to discover the level of transformation and impact generated by the intervention.

Following the principle of “usefulness” in evaluation, participants were asked to share informative interests and needs which could be considered relevant, with the object of measuring the impact of processes studied by the school’s students, teaching staff, directors, families and community. The aim was to not only evaluate if objectives had been met, but also to identify which mechanisms had contributed to success (as per the theory of change) and thus understand more easily the recommendations which resulted from the evaluation.

Broadly speaking, the evaluation stated that the Fe y Alegría centres successfully attain good academic results at the same time as they develop positive values and attitudes. This is considered a significant achievement. Furthermore, there was a marked shift in focus within Fe y Alegría centres as they sought educational quality. The focus was no longer on being present in as many places as possible, but on guaranteeing quality. Even so, the evaluation revealed challenges still to overcome such as working with the community and improving the integration of a gender perspective.

Following the evaluation, improvement schemes have been designed in these countries and work has been carried out with the various management teams for Fe y Alegrias and the International Federation to integrate the recommendations at various levels where appropriate and make the project’s processes more efficient.

The videos let us see the evaluation process in action. We hope they are useful to everyone involved in similar educational processes.

What does the evaluation tell us?

How was the evaluation conducted?