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Impact calendars
Impact calendars can be useful for measuring impacts against ‘dimensional’ indicators such as time
and distance. Catley et al (2008) describe how an impact calendar was used to analyze the number
of months of household food security ‘before’ and ‘after’ a project. Project participants were given
25 counters representing a household’s post-harvest food balance. Using 12 cards, one for each
month of the year, participants were asked to distribute the counters along a 12 month calendar to
show the monthly household utilization of the harvested maize, as shown in Table T12.
Table T12: Food Security Impact Calendar Using 25 Counters
April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar
2004-2005 •••••• ••••• •••• •• •
•••••• •
2006-2007 •••••• •••• •••• ••• ••• ••
actual •••
2006-2007 •••••• ••••• ••••
(Control) ••••••
••
••
Source: Reproduced with permission from Catley, A., Burns, J., Abebe, D. and Suji, O. (2008). Participatory
Impact Assessment: A guide for practitioners. Feinstein International Center, Medford
This exercise was done three times: firstly with the project participants for the agricultural year
before the project started; secondly with the same people for the agricultural year after the project
had started; and thirdly with a control group - community members who had not participated in the
project – for the year after the project started. The three sets of time series data were then graphed
as shown in Figure T17.
FigureT17: Changes in Number of Months of Food Security
15
10
5
0
Duration of Household Food Security (n = 1)
Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar
2004-2005 2006/07 Project Participants 2006/07 Non-Participants
Source: Reproduced with permission from Catley, A., Burns, J., Abebe, D. and Suji, O. (2008). Participatory
Impact Assessment: A guide for practitioners. Feinstein International Center, Medford.
Social Impact Assessment of Land-Based Carbon Projects (1.0) – Part II | 54