Environmental Learning for Kids (ELK)

Location: Denver, Colorado

Report Year: 2016

Approach: Mixed-methods; youth survey + open-ended response

Target evaluation outcomes: 

• Participant well-being
• Personal capacity
• Academic achievement
• Environmental stewardship

Report style: “Traditional” (Executive Summary, Narrative-style text, graphs, charts +Infographics)

Link to evaluation report. 

Background: 

ELK engages urban youth in outdoor and environmental education experiences throughout the school year and summer in the Mountain West.  Many of the youth are repeat participants, meaning they often stay with the program year after year, building a cumulative, repeat program experience.  

To better understand how youth take up this experience, ELK partnered with the University of Colorado to develop a participant survey to be administered annually at the end of the traditional school year. After collecting the data over multiple years, ELK staff partnered with an external evaluation team, Blue Lotus Consulting & Evaluation, for support with data analysis and reporting.  Using data from the closed-ended survey questions, open-ended survey questions, and program output data, and in close collaboration with ELK staff, Blue Lotus helped design a report that aimed to showcase the impact of ELK programming on participating youth. 

What worked:

When using a combined or mixed-methods approach that provides an opportunity for participants to share and reflect on their experience in their own words, you create a means of sharing the story beyond the numbers. And, you also offer easy, digestible output data that showcases both reach and impact (e.g., participant numbers, hours, demographics, survey scale responses, etc.).  Partnering with local university partners, graduate students and/or external evaluators can help organizations utilize the data they’ve collected to inform program design and/or change.