If a girl sees measurable indications of her movement towards personal empowerment, she will be more motivated to continue putting time and effort into a sport programme. An effective way to inspire a girl’s growth is to help her set goals. Goals can be set for sport-specific skills, such as basketball shooting percentage or goals scored in a season. Although more difficult to quantify, goals can be also be set for improvement in life skills, such as saving a certain amount of money or becoming more vocal in a classroom setting.
Tracking a programme’s success based on the intended objectives should be part of an organisation’s monitoring and evaluation strategy. One way to measure if the girls in your programme change their behaviour because of your programme is to give them a baseline survey (which asks questions related to what they will be learning) before the programme begins and then give them that same survey (the endline) after to the programme ends. By evaluating how their answers change, your organisation can get a better understanding of the impact of the curriculum or particular programme had on the girls. For an example of a baseline survey and ways to monitor and evaluate your girls’ sport programme, go to the Impact Section of this guide.
Girls also can be engaged in tracking their own progress toward meeting their goals. A girl can track her speed, goals scored or skill development. It’s important to first “pre-test” girls to establish a starting point from which to improve. For example, a running coach might time girls in the 100- and 800-meter distances and record their times. Perhaps more meaningfully, progress can be measured in discussions between participants and coaches in regard to life skills, such as leadership. When discussing progress, ask girls how they feel about their growth or what is important for them to feel satisfied with their performance. It is especially important to encourage girls to develop goals for themselves when they enter the program, so they have a sense of what they are working toward. For more information on measuring the impact of your sport programme on girls, go to the Impact Section of this guide.
- If you have access to video cameras, have girls do “before” and “after” video interviews. In the pre-programme interview, ask each girl what she hopes to learn or wants to learn, what her goals are. Show girls their interviews halfway through the programme and see if they have reached their objectives. If not, ask them what they think they need to do so they do reach their goals. Using video is a great way to make this interactive and fun!
- Have girls keep diaries or journals during the programme, where they can write down how they see themselves progressing.
- Have girls interview people in their community about how they themselves have changes throughout the programme. For example, have each girl interview her mother or father, a best friend or a teacher, asking that person what physical and mental changes they have seen in her since she started the sport programme. Then, the girls must report back what the interviewee said. This is a great way for the girls to see how their changes were perceived by those around them.