Learning, Evaluation and Storytelling

Organisation: Refugee Council

The project: I was invited by the Refugee Involvement team to support them in thinking about learning approaches for an exciting new workstream involving ‘pioneer projects’ testing approaches to involving refugees and people seeking asylum in developing and delivering their work. In particular, given that the aims of the workstream include changes to knowledge, attitudes and practice, which can be hard to capture using quantitative evaluation tools, the team wanted to embed a storytelling approach to learning using Most Significant Change methodology.

Impact:

• I worked with the team to develop a shared understanding of how storytelling fits into a wider approach to evaluation and can play a key role in surfacing impacts that matter most to those involved in the work.
• We created simple prompts and tools designed to slot into the rhythms of the project cycle, with the emerging Community of Practice as a hub for sharing, discussing and putting forward stories of Most Significant Change.
• I co-facilitated a learning workshop with Pioneer Project leads to share plans around learning and storytelling, incorporating their ideas on how to embed ongoing learning and reflection loops into the programme.

“Thank you so much for the amazing support yesterday. I loved all the activities you did, and of course the learning session, and it seemed staff loved it too. They found your session most helpful, it has given them confidence about how to do involvement well and learn from it too.” – Yusuf Ciftci, Head of Refugee Involvement