Assignment Two Homework
Online Learning
OL 102 Project Architecture: Planning for Impact.
Center for Sustainable Impact: https://csd-i.org/project-architecture-ol-102/.
This week’s resources:
Class Home Page
Assignment Two Discussion
Download Class Documents

Assignment 2: Planning for Impact.
Getting Started
Go to the Download Course Documents menu link to your left and open up the document called OL 102 Assignment Two Student Logframe Template to Fill In. You’ll see that it’s the same matrix that we completed in week one, but that in a number of the empty cells I have added more information. Use this as a guide to fill in the empty cells in your project’s logframe from last week.

Part 1.
Impact statement
If we return to the negative impact statements on our problem statements from Assignment One of the first course we will see that it says that children face “stunting and a reduction of their ability to participate in family and community activities, and attend and concentrate in school”. Where will that lead those children to be 15 or 20 years from now? Their lack of development and education will keep them trapped in the cycle of poverty and they may continue to be undernourished and unhealthy.

Much as our goal statement was a mirror image or a positive version of our problem statement, the project’s impact statement will be a positive version of the long-term negative impact. So my impact statement says that “100 families in the western highlands of Guatemala have risen out of the cycle of poverty and lead healthy, prosperous, productive lives”. That sums up why I’m doing this project: so these children won’t grow up stunted, unhealthy, and poor, but well developed, healthy, productive, and prosperous.

“Impact is the long-term, sustainable change in the conditions of people that structurally reduce poverty and improve human well-being”.

Part 2.
Outcome statements
Much like our outputs and Sub-goals added up to equal our main project goal, our outcomes need to add up to equal our impact statement. The impact statement reflects the results of the project outcomes.

Hopefully, our project influenced peoples’ decisions to make changes in their behavior– such as incorporating hand washing into their daily routines. This isn’t something tangible that you can touch and feel (like a new school building) but behavioral changes that result in healthier lives. These behavior changes over five years, or 10 years will create impact. And this is why we do impact-oriented projects.

My outputs and sub-goals discuss people attending workshops and having measurable improved health in the short term. But will they continue to maintain that level of health after my crew has left? Outcomes described the fact that people have adopted these healthy practices permanently into their lives.

The health and hygiene outcome for my project states: “100 rural families adopt beneficial health and hygiene practices into their lives allowing children to grow and develop properly, be able to participate in education, and be prosperous, productive members of their communities”.

Add outcome statements adjacent to each of your Sub-Goals.

Part 3.
Monitoring and Evaluation: Indicators and Means of Verification
This week we are going to begin developing a Monitoring and Evaluation plan that will be expanded in the third course of this series ‘Positive Outcomes.’

Why a monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) plan? We want to be able to observe if our theory of change (our activities and outputs) are working. If we aren’t achieving the results we want in the process of the project – and we can identify that – we can make adjustments to improve our results. An M&E plan also means that we can provide factual final reports, and learn from the results of our project.

Since we worked so hard to make our outputs and activities measurable, indicators let us know we succeeded. For example, if we hold a workshop for 100 people – an indicator would be that they did indeed attend.

But we need to verify that they did come – so means of verification could be workshop sign-in sheets and photographs.

Look at my example for ideas and go ahead and place indicators and means of verifications adjacent to your outputs and activities as shown in the example

The homework to turn in will be to add the following into the Logframe Template for your project:
1. Impact statement
2. Outcomes statements
3. Indicators and Means of Verification for outputs and activities

Go to OL 102 Assignment Two Student Logframe Template to Fill In to see what this could look like.

See you next week.

Tim Magee