Evaluation Design
Africa Yoga Project
About the Africa Yoga Project:
The Africa Yoga Project (AYP) is a project focused on improving the lives of young people in 13 African countries. Specifically, this project was designed to help train unemployed youth to become yoga teachers. The founder of the project, Paige Elenson, recognized the popularity of yoga and yoga retreats and saw an opportunity to bring economic growth to 13 African countries by employing over 200 young people to teach yoga classes in their communities.
Goals of the Project:
-To empower youth
-To help youth become civic leaders
-To offer employment opportunities and help youth become more employable
-To bring communities together
-To increase the well-being of youth and their communities
Staff and Resources:
With 24 people working on this project, AYP has been able to employ over 200 youth as yoga teachers. AYP is partnered with many large organizations such as UNICEF, Microsoft, and Lululemon. They also have research teams in Boston and Buffalo.
Ways to get involved:
If you are interested in this project, there are many fun ways to get involved. You can become a mentor, join a service trip to Kenya, attend the Yoga Academy to become a trained yoga teacher, attend yoga classes in Africa, or donate.
Evaluation
The purpose of my evaluation is to mainly assess what is working well for the program and what needs improvement. I am interested to see if the target market is being reached effectively and if the program does in fact empower youth by making them more employable. Some questions I would like to focus on to guide my evaluation design:
Are any of the 200 yoga teachers now yoga teacher trainers?
How many of the yoga teacher trainers are employed and not from Africa?
Is there opportunity for growth within the company for youth beginning as yoga teachers?
How much of the profits are going back into the communities? How is that money being spent to further this project and expand the project’s goals?
How many people from other parts of the world participate in this project? How does that compare to the amount of Africans participating in the project?
Are there any people from the community who have senior positions within the company? Are they able to make decisions about the project?
What do the community members think of the program?
How many more tourists have come to the communities since the program was implemented?
How has tourism impacted the communities?
To be honest, I’m not sure how I will collect this data. I have contacted someone from the project and hope to hear from them soon but I am not sure how much information they are willing to give out.
https://www.africayogaproject.org
