The Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) fund supports the Scottish Government’s commitment to tackling gender-based violence. The Voluntary Action Fund (VAF) took over the management of the fund programme in 2012.
‘Violence against women and girls’ is a term used by the Scottish Government to define a range of actions which harm or cause suffering and indignity to women and children. Their strategy Equally Safe defines gender-based violence and how gender inequalities are the root cause of VAWG.
The Story So Far…
We are in our 4th year of supporting VAF and the range of projects and services they manage through the VAWG fund. These include: women’s aid and rape crisis centres, and children and families’ services, as well as a small number of national membership, awareness-raising and campaigning organisations.
We have provided core evaluation workshops for services across all fund streams operating throughout Scotland from setting outcomes right through to reporting on them.
“Excellent workshop! A lot of learning around all issues, especially indicators. Will have a direct, positive impact on my organisation/work practice.”
We facilitated a working group to co-create a new reporting template. Find out more here!
We worked individually with 20 local organisations to help them develop and embed effective evaluation into their practice.
A change in direction…
In 2015, the Scottish Government changed the fund’s outcomes to reflect their focus on prevention. In response to this ESS co-facilitated a learning set with VAF to explore what prevention meant to the funded projects and how we could support their evaluation of this work.
We have also developed more resources and a workshop to help organisations embed evaluation into everyday practice.
“There is definitely an opportunity for this work to significantly influence and feed into wider conversations.” Scottish Government Official
Resources to evaluate prevention
These resources have been produced by the learning set, the guide is to help groups, services and campaigners measure the impact of their work that challenges and changes attitudes and behaviours to prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG) before it happens. The accompanying report tells you about the background to the project, key learning points and information about setting outcomes and measuring prevention work.
