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Program Design, Implementation and Evaluation Experience

AGE TRANSITIONAL MODEL DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION

 

A project to refine the Age Transitional Model developed by Make a Difference, propose the roadmap for future development and create evaluation plan to identify the efficacy of the model in preparation for scaling.

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My Role: Program Development Consultant

Context

The Age Transitional Model aims to ensure that institutionalised children get holistic integrated interventions at the right time in their development, starting from age 10 all the way through young adulthood until they hit stable outcomes around the age of 28. It equips children from high adversity backgrounds living in child care institutions with the knowledge and skills needed to ensure meaningful progression advancement at every key trajectory point in their development.

 

The trajectory points represent key events that affect an individual's' ability to continue to progress towards a healthy and stable middle class life outcome. These are Age 14 (when children could typically drop out of education because they can legally work in non-hazardous situations), Age 16 (When they complete secondary school), Age 18 (When they have to leave the CCI), Age 23 and Beyond ( When they transition into adulthood and are faced with increased responsibilities and prepare for family life). 

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The model has multiple sub-projects, built around each of the five key trajectory points/stages. 

  1. Foundational Skills [Ages 10-13]: To build foundational literacy, numeract, life skills and emotional health required to support future development. These are the building blocks of advanced development at an older age as children transition to adolescence. 

  2. Education Support [Ages 14-16]: To build skills and knowledge needed to process further in education or in some cases, career. The intent is to ensure they have the option to continue education after 10th standard and meaningfully make career choices. 

  3. Transition Readiness [Ages 17-18]: To build skills and knowledge required to transition out of the CCI and reintergrate back into the community. This includes extensive career exploration and guidance, while developing life skills needed to cope with crisis (emotional, social and financial). 

  4. After Care [Ages 19-28]: To support youth as they navigate higher education and/or career and transition into adulthood. 

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My Role: Program Development Consultant

  • I developed the monitoring and evaluation framework for the project that can be adopted at scale for 5000 plus children/youth. This included creating program logic models, defining and mapping indicators to program outcomes and outputs, finalizing evaluation questions, approach, and data collection methodology, and developing questionnaires and focus group protocols.

  • I refined and documented the strategy for child and youth development interventions for 3000+ children and youth between the ages of 10-18 living in 67 child-care institutions. This included analyzing information from key-informant interviews and conducting a meta-review of previous impact evaluations. The strategy was designed to address the identified gaps and challenges, and to achieve the desired outcomes, and it was developed collaboratively with key stakeholders.

  • I created the outline, scope, and sequence for program playbooks for the Youth Development program. These playbooks will serve as a tool for implementing the interventions, thereby increasing operational efficiency by streamlining the implementation process. The playbooks were developed through a collaborative effort involving key stakeholders and were designed to be user-friendly and adaptable to diverse program settings.

AFTER SCHOOL YOUTH ENGAGEMENT

 

A research practice partnership project to provide expert consultation on supporting adolescents, empirically grounded recommendations, and practice and policy solutions for a after-school youth engagement program for the local community of Revere, MA.

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My Role: Program Development Consultant

Context

City of Revere wanted to design an after school program to support their children's learning during after-school hours, but resources to do so are asymmetrically distributed across families. The variations in resources and preferences between families and communities are significant and require understanding and engagement. This project aimed to understand the needs of families of revere and design an after-school intervention. 

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My Role: Program Development Consultant

Conducted a comprehensive literature review to understand the needs of immigrant families in Revere with regards to after-school programs. Based on the findings, developed an interview protocol and conducted interviews with families to conduct a problem analysis and identify their unique needs and challenges. Finally, created a policy brief and recommended implementation plan that outlined the program's goals, objectives, and activities. The brief was designed to inform decision-makers and stakeholders about the program's potential impact and to garner support for its successful implementation.

EVALUATION PLAN AND PROPOSAL, CREE SCHOOL

 

A consultancy project for CREE school to document their program theories and develop a complete program evaluation proposal.

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My Role: Research and Evaluation Consultant

Context

CREE is a non-profit corporation based in Chile, working with low-income children to improve academic and socio-emotional outcomes. This project involved creating an evaluation plan to build organizational evaluation capacity and affect change.

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My Role: Research and Evaluation Consultant

Led the development of the program's logic model and theory of change documentation. Worked with key stakeholders to identify evaluation questions, approach, and data collection methodology, and created the evaluation framework through a collaborative effort. The framework was designed to assess the program's effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, and sustainability, and to inform decision-making and program improvement.

IGNITE THE SPARKS

 

A project to build personal agency among youth by working with the youth and stakeholders in their immediate environment.

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My Role: Founder and Career Coach

Context

Every Individual has the potential to thrive. One only has to ignite the sparks within. The project envisions a world where youth are able to realize their full potential and participate productively and purposefully in life. It aims to build personal agency among youth, enable them to make informed career choices, and support them to be better prepared to pursue the career of their choice.

 

The project has a 5 point approach: 

  1. Empower youth by taking them on a journey of exploration - Self and the World around them through deep self-introspection and exposure to multiple careers.

  2. Enable informed decision making through career guidance and goal setting.

  3. Support youth create a future plan and work toward it through career guidance and planning.

  4. Work with youth to develop skills critical for work readiness and career progression through experiential learning-driven sessions.

  5. Foster a supportive environment to minimize barriers to career development by working with immediate stakeholders.

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My Role: Founder

I started the project in my quest to empower young people thrive using creative expression as a tool to facilitate personal transformation. I have developed the project strategy taking insights from my earlier work with youth creating learning experience focused on life skill development and secondary research on theoretical frameworks in career development. At present, it is in the nascent stages of development and testing. 

ED SUPPORT

 

A program implemented by Make a Difference to ensure children in need of care & protection (CNCP) receive academic support & necessary skills to progress further in education or career.

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My Role: Program Operations Director

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Key Sub-projects I led:

  • Mentor Recruitment and Onboarding

  • After School Mentoring and Coaching

  • Community Fundraising

  • Data Utilization and Reporting

Context

Children in need of care and protection in India often end up in children homes, which are overloaded and focused more on basic needs than childcare or longer-term academic progression. The result is that both quality of life and adult outcomes for children in this demographic is very poor, leading to repeated cycles of poverty and abandonment for their families. With inadequate educational qualifications, life skills, financial or emotional support to cope outside institutions; as adults they often take up menial jobs or get trapped into alcoholism, violence, drug abuse, marriage scams, sex work or trafficking. Solutions that exist often struggle with the scale of the problem or are isolated. The Education support program focused on ensuring children in need of care & protection receive academic support & necessary skills to progress further in education or career. The program is designed to ensure children in institutions receive the quality of support and 1-on-1 attention required to bridge learning gaps and enable them to clear Grade 10 and pursue higher education. The program impacts 3000+ children through a network of 2500+ volunteers. It has consistently maintained a 93%+ pass percentage in 10 board exams.

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My Role: Program Operations Director

I was associated with the project in multiple capacities, first as a strategist (regional manager) from 2015 until 2017 and then as program Director from 2018 until 2020. I focussed on designing and testing new interventions, support continuous improvement by advising on the needs of children and other stakeholders, ensuring effective operational delivery across the footprint (23 cities across India), building & maintaining team culture, mobilizing large volunteer groups, & designing & managing projects.

 

I spearheaded program operations across 23 cities, 67 CCIs supporting 2500+ children through weekly after-school classes in Mathematics, Science, and English ensuring a 93% pass percentage.

  • This involved building, managing, mobilizing and training a large remote and distributed team of over 40 city managers, 14 regional managers, 160 academic support mentors, and 2000+ academic support volunteers.

  • I created multi-year operational plans including goals, milestones, metrics, and budget estimates of over 2 crore valuation.

  • I designed training strategy, content & delivery model for all operational layers, ensuring 90% of leadership layers were trained before role commencement. This led to 90% of participants feeling inspired & ready to execute their role. 

 

To improve the intervention design:

  • I worked on problem definition for the program, identifying and prioritizing needs of 14-16-year-old children required for academic readiness and career progression.

  • Researched and standardized indicators and created baseline assessment for developing gender awareness and decision-making skills for foundational skills program pilot. 

PATHWAYS

 

A project started by Lend a Hand India to enable higher secondary students to experience the world of work, develop key transferable skills, understand the real-world application of skills and theoretical knowledge, make informed career choices and pursue a career pathway successfully. The ultimate aim is to increase their chances of becoming resilient income-earning members of society.

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My Role: Manager

Context

Employability statistics of students, post higher secondary and graduation level, highlight an unfortunate truth – ‘merely time spent in school and earning a certificate/degree does not lead to a productive and gainful life’. The disconnect between what one learns in school vs. what is required in real life has left more than 50% of the Indian graduates unemployed. Skill education does not cater to the market demand and most of the training required to enter the workforce happens on the first job for all practical purposes. Project Pathways enables higher secondary students to experience the world of work, develop key transferable skills, understand the real-world application of skills and theoretical knowledge, make informed career choices and pursue a career pathway successfully. The ultimate aim is to increase their chances of becoming resilient income-earning members of society.

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Project approach:

  1. Internships are introduced as a part of the vocational training curriculum to students in 11th and 12th grade wherein the students are placed with medium, small & large enterprises to support them build transferable skills.

  2. Regular support to students for the development of employability skills (life skills critical for work readiness).

  3. Make information on career pathways accessible to children to enable better career decision making.

  4. Support students with career counselling and goal setting.

  5. Improve access to opportunities like scholarships/ training & certification/ apprenticeship, etc. which increases their chances of employment.

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My Role: Manager

I joined the project team just as the first phase of pilot across Maharashtra and Delhi was completed. I was responsible for developing the program further to make it scale ready across varied learner and cultural contexts.

 

One of the key areas I focussed on was conducting a thorough program evaluation to test for efficacy of the solution, identity gaps in implementation, refine program strategy and recommend a future roadmap. In order to do this,

  • I planned and executed empathy mapping exercise for all stakeholders to improve problem definition and identify focus areas to inform program operations.

  • I documented the project logic model, analysed employability skill development frameworks to inform standardisation of outcome indicators, created the implementation workflow (including creating artefacts for implementation), devised systems and processes to increase the effectiveness of project management with a focus on quality and risk management. ​

 

Parallely, in response to the pandemic, we piloted virtual internships for 5000+ higher secondary youth studying in urban public schools across 3 states, Delhi, Maharashtra, and Gujarat. ​

DREAM CAMPS

 

A project implemented by Make a Difference to help institutionalised children build and connect with their dreams, gain confidence through action and exposure to new experiences in a supportive and safe environment. 

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My Role: Project Manager and Founding Team Member

Context

Institutionalization typically results in children growing up in insular environments where they rarely get to experience the unfamiliar. When they leave the shelter, they struggle to cope with the range of new challenges and experiences that inevitably come their way, and for many, this can cripple their self-belief and thus longer-term outcomes. Dreaming about the future is also often missing from children who live with emotional traumas, and without markers for the future, there is little motivation to invest in activities like schooling that have longer-term returns. Dream Camps aim to address that sense of hopelessness and lack of self-belief by helping children build and connect with their dreams, gain confidence through action and exposure to new experiences in a supportive and safe environment, and for a few days, to be free from the confines of the childcare institutions they grow up in. This is done through a process of self-growth and transformation via a tried & tested methodology called the ‘arc of transformation’ which involves four group plenaries.

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Across the year over 35 camps are organised impacting 3100+ children in 23 cities through a network of a large remote and distributed team of 28 city camp leads, 200+ subteam leads and 2000+ volunteers across cities.

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The project impact: 95% of children felt an increase in awareness of dreams post-camp; 93% of children felt an increase in self-belief post-camp; 65% of children felt more confident to try new things after the dream camp; 87% of children had fun holiday experience at camp.

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My Role: Project Manager

My association with project began in the year 2015 when I joined the team responsible for restructuring the camp design to include plenary session. In the initial years I focused on improving session delivery through testing activities and training facilitators. Over time, after joining the project team full time to lead project design and implementation, I worked extensively on improving the program impact for children and youth by refining project theory of change, creating the logic model, and refining the delivery model, designing learning experiences, creating evaluation framework and creating multi-year operational plan. I set up project management systems to ensure continuous improvement, regular tracking and monitoring and risk mitigation.

 

As one of the founding team members, I assisted with restructuring camp design in 2015 to the plenary sessions based on arc of transformation. As the project lead, I spearheaded design and execution of 35+ yearly camps across 23 cities, 67 shelters with a large remote and distributed team of 28 city camp leads, 200+ subteam leads, and 2000+ volunteers. I focused on making the project sustainable at scale by streamlining sponsorship platforms in collaboration with the organisation's fundraising team and improving project communications and outreach by collaborating with specialists in communications and outreach. I created sponsorship platforms at the city and national level, leading to a 40% reduction in camp cost amounting to roughly 35 Lakhs and leading to 90% of the cities being able to raise funds for city camps locally. I built strategies for child care and experience, communications, and outreach, impact assessment, team recruitment, and management. I designed & upgraded the capacity building and training model for 150+ facilitators and 1000+ mentors. This led to 88% of children being actively engaged in sessions. Of the lead facilitators trained, 80% were selected for leadership roles subsequently. I designed life skills activities aimed at developing motivation and self-awareness for adolescents. This led to 93% children feeling that they could achieve their dreams.

DISCOVER

 

A project implemented by Make a Difference to help institutionalised children empowering children to make informed decisions and build self-confidence by conducting experiential learning workshops that enable self-awareness, career exploration and exposure and help develop essential life skills in children. 

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My Role: Strategist (Regional Manager) 

Context

Discover focused on empowering children to make informed decisions and build self-confidence by conducting experiential learning workshops that enable self-awareness, career exploration and exposure and help develop essential life skills in children. 

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Project Approach:

  1. Improve knowledge about different career pathways and options based on the child's interest area through experiential workshops, field visits and activity-based learning.

  2. Improve self-awareness and develop life skills that promote agency through reflection exercises.

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My Role: Strategist (Regional Manager) 

I began working at the learner level by designing learning experiences for them and pivoted to program level by leading the delivery across multiple cities and creating the national curriculum for life skills development and career exploration.

  • I led operations of the project across 4 cities, 12 shelters with a team of 8 city managers and 100+ volunteers. This included team recruitment, training, and mentoring.

  • I developed the career readiness curriculum and content for 12-16-year-old children across the program. This included working with content developers to create modules, designing sessions for life skills development, career exploration, subject application and exposure.

  • I improved operational processes for session delivery and approval to maintain consistency in the quality of sessions across 23 cities. This included creating and implementing systems for operations tracking.

  • I designed and executed training for 50+ city managers at the annual leadership conference.

  • I facilitated and trained individuals to facilitate life skills development sessions in multiple 3-day, residential, experiential learning camps which focused on building exposure and essential life-skills.

I BREAK MY SILENCE

 

A project to raise awareness around gender-based violence and create a platform for people to engage in a dialogue around the same.

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My Role: Project Lead

Context

The project envisioned creating a social structure free of Gender-Based Violence (GBV), by encouraging the community to break its silence. The project provided an online platform for the survivors to share their stories of GBV, engaged the youth through awareness sessions and promoted bystander intervention.

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The project had a four-point approach:

  1. Engage the youth through awareness sessions on the reality of the prevalence of GBV, its impact & prevention

  2. Provide a safe online platform for survivors of GBV to share their stories and break the silence

  3. Community campaigns in collaboration with local governments & agencies to create a safe environment that encourages survivors and bystanders to speak up. 

  4. Encourage the community to intervene in situations and not be bystanders, sharing their stories of intervention to inspire others to take action.

 

The project has impacted 2000+ students through sessions, received more than 700 stories of GBV. The project won Coca Cola Shaping A Better Future Grant Challenge 2015 for $10,000.

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My Role: Project Lead

As one of the founding team members of the project, I was involved in conceptualisation, needs analysis, designing project strategy, testing learning activities and developing the final project model. We organized community campaigns in collaboration with local governments & agencies to create a safe environment that encourages survivors and bystanders to speak up. These are #MyFirstIncident, where survivors shared their first harassment incident and age; and #OrangeItUp where individuals pledged to speak up against GBV by pinning the orange ribbon. The awareness campaigns had an outreach of over 20000 through social and print media. 

LEARNING FROM FOUNDATIONS

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A Project for Teaching and Learning Lab Practicum to  investigate how Ed.M. students at Harvard Graduate School of Education are synthesizing and applying learning from Foundational Courses and create prototypes of resources aligned with student needs as well as resources for faculty and staff to support students on their learning journey.

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My Role: Learning Design Fellow, Evaluation

Context

For the first time ever, all 650 of Harvard Ed.M. students took four thoughtfully-designed, robust Foundations courses. This project aims to understand the impact of the Ed.M. Foundations courses.Primary Investigation Questions are: How did Foundations change students’ thinking and expectations for the school year?; How did Foundations affect the course selection process / advising process? How are students making connections across their Foundations learning and between Foundations and their program experiences?

 

My Role: Learning Design Fellow, Evaluation

Identified a line of inquiry to understand the impact of the foundation's program. Created a qualitative interview protocol and conducted interviews and focus groups with program participants and stakeholders to collect data on the program's effectiveness and impact. Used tools such as empathy maps and learner user journeys to record and synthesize information and gain a deeper understanding of participants' experiences and perceptions of the program. The resulting insights were used to inform program improvement and to identify opportunities for greater impact. Finally, presented the findings and recommendations to the foundation's leadership team and key stakeholders.

WALTON LANDSCAPE STUDY

 

A research project by the Center for education policy research at Harvard University.

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My Role: Graduate Research Assistant

Context

A qualitative landscape analysis study to determine what information is needed, wanted, and helpful in the identification and adoption of academic interventions and to determine what barriers exist for schools and districts to pilot and test interventions before rolling them out system-wide. 

 

My Role: Graduate Research Assistant

Performed thematic analysis using a priori codes to identify key themes and insights from the data. Collaborated with the research team to analyze and synthesize the findings, and presented the results in a clear and concise manner. The insights gained from the analysis informed the development of a proposal for a network evaluation model intended to support the identification and adoption of evidence-based academic interventions.

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