Programme Evaluation 2014-15

Recommendations

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• The initial outcomes of F4C’s work have grown through numerous forms of added value. This can be seen not merely in additional financial contributions that extend the scope of ongoing projects and help create new ones, but in non-pecuniary ways, which include a major input of volunteering and F4C’s paid workers ‘going the extra mile’. Most impressive of all, perhaps, is how F4C’s message is being spread: sharing and applying the skills, knowledge and understanding gained through individual projects beyond the space and time of the projects themselves. People on a very restricted income have been empowered to live more healthily by eating well, growing vegetables, conserving energy in the home and reducing or eliminating food and textile waste. Children have been able to share a wide range of practical environment-related skills with their parents, siblings, wider families and friends. Isolated and vulnerable women have discovered safe places where they can exchange ideas, make new friends and build self-confidence. Inner urban spaces that previously were derelict, unwelcoming and uncared for are now attractive, well-tended gardens that are valued by those who work and relax there: people who in many cases previously felt themselves rejected and powerless. This evaluation has shown that F4C plays a role in the North West’s voluntary sector that is out of all proportion to its size and resource base. F4C uses the catalyst of faith – a characteristic lying at the heart of our humanity - to transcend culturally-imposed barriers. By so doing, it empowers individuals and communities who experience disadvantage as a direct consequence of those barriers to assert their humanity in new and sustainable ways. What is equally clear is that, through its ethos, F4C, its partners and beneficiaries are helping to re-define voluntary activity as a social ecology rather than a matrix of formally-constituted institutions that – with varying degrees of success – re-shape themselves in response to top-down directives. In difficult and uncertain times for voluntary organisations across the North West, it seems that such an organic approach to overcoming challenges is a more logical and effective one. The final, and strongest, recommendation of this evaluation is that F4C should give serious thought to how its message can best be communicated and applied in creating a sustainable and transformative voluntary sector ecology across the North West. Can, for example, F4C and its partners jointly design and deliver appropriate training to other organisations, so that more of them can become resilient and connected to their target communities? Photo 11: BBC North West’s Dianne Oxberry presenting F4C’s CEO Annie Merry with the Liverpool Echo’s 20<strong>15</strong> Environmental Champion Award. (Photo: Liverpool Echo 01.05.20<strong>15</strong>) 23
Photo 12: Asylum Link Merseyside ladies’ group took part in F4C’s Sew Many Trees project, in which participants made a themed tree entirely with unwanted textiles. They stitched leaves from their home countries and added them to the shared tree. 24
Page 1 and 2: Programme Evaluation 2014 - 15
Page 3 and 4: Contents “The most important prin
Page 5 and 6: Chart 1: Percentage of Project Area
Page 7 and 8: Running Costs In addition to the co
Page 9 and 10: Although every local authority area
Page 11 and 12: 4. Nature and Extent of Partnership
Page 13 and 14: element of this was to work with fa
Page 15 and 16: 6. Outputs and Outcomes “A lack o
Page 17 and 18: • 80 asylum seekers supported by
Page 19 and 20: 7. Partners’ Perspectives “True
Page 21 and 22: skills and shared responsibility. P
Page 23: • F4C has successfully maintained

Programme Evaluation 2014-15

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