This week in the Stories with Substance series, we are taking a look at the impact Views has had on not one but hundreds of organisations across the StreetGames network. Founded in 2007 by several local sports projects, StreetGames has grown to a network of almost 1000 organisations aiming to use sport to help disadvantaged children and young people across the UK.
Through a range of sports-based activities, StreetGames together with a network of local organisations aim to tackle a range of social issues such as improving health & wellbeing, reducing crime, tackling inequality and enhancing employability of participants. In turn, the data collated, monitored and evaluated through Views has allowed StreetGames to inform policy makers about the best strategies for using sport to change lives. The StreetGames led initiative, Doorstep Sports Clubs, which provides easily accessible sports within disadvantaged communities reached over 102,000 young people between 2013-2017.
StreetGames became part of the Substance family in 2012 when integrating the Views platform into their monitoring and evaluation strategy. Ceris Anderson, Head of Knowledge & Insight, explained how Sport England’s target of engaging 100,000 young people through Doorstep Sports meant that StreetGames required a single system which could collate participation data from a 1000 separate Doorstep Sports Clubs across the UK. Views was the answer. The systems ability to collate data into one centralised dashboard which produced real-time insight into key metrics was the reason StreetGames was attracted to Substance. Since then, StreetGames has developed their use of Views to support Locally Trusted Organisations in monitoring and evaluating their work. Allowing them to; showcase their impact to funders, review performance and identify trends to inform planning strategies. Ceris suggested that due to the time and resource restrictions on some LTOs, it was essential StreetGames supported them through Views. Ceris went on to summarise the impact of Views:
“Views has helped many of the local organisations we work with to collate more robust monitoring data and evidence their impact locally. From a StreetGames perspective, having a single system that over 300+ community organisations feed into has been key, and was instrumental in being able to demonstrate the scale and importance of doorstep sport provision in enabling hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged young people to take part in sport in their local area”.
Over time, StreetGames use of Views has grown. At present, StreetGames uses Views to monitor and evaluate data for a variety of projects such as ParkLives, Safe, Fit & Well and most recently, the Fit & Fed project which aims to tackle isolation, inactivity and hunger over the summer school holidays. The ability to monitor and evaluate multiple projects delivered by separate organisations within their network has allowed StreetGames to develop a diverse range of programmes which tackle a multitude of social issues up and down the country.
In the 6 years since implementing the Views platform, StreetGames has reached more than 141,000 young people across the UK and delivered over 181,500 sessions and events. All in all, this equates to an unbelievable 7.5 million hours of contact time being delivered by a 1000 organisation within the StreetGames network. These numbers are staggering, and yet, they still do not tell the full story. Providing Sport to disadvantaged communities is having an extraordinary impact on a personal level. StreetGames reported that 84% of attendee scored high/very high for their ‘life satisfaction’; while 96% suggested their skills had improved from sessions ran by organisations in the StreetGames network. This impact was exemplified by one Doorstep Sports participant who said:
“The gym session is brill – the variety of different activities and it’s good because it’s free – otherwise I couldn’t afford to go to the gym a lot”
Substance is not the only organisation to recognise the great work of StreetGames in recent months. In early 2018, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced that StreetGames would be 1 of only 6 organisations to be support by their royal wedding. This backing has allowed the organisation to grow their profile, not only in the UK but on a global stage.
If you would like to know more about StreetGames and their projects throughout the UK, please visit https://www.streetgames.org/
If you are an organisation interested in showcasing your impact through monitoring and evaluation, why not visit http://www.viewsapp.net/ or email adam.white@substance.net for more info.
