SE1264 - This Girl Can - Place Pilots Evaluation

The This Girl Can Place Pilots are a series of test-and-learn projects delivered in five locations across England, working with local partners to design and deliver interventions shaped directly by the women we want to reach.

Each pilot will test and learn how local organisations can:

• Use insights from This Girl Can to shape or enhance opportunities for women to be active.
• Connect campaign-driven motivation (demand) with accessible and relevant local activities (supply).
• Ensure women are supported to take action e.g. trying an activity for at least 10 minutes or more.

We will be working with, and alongside, women and the organisations they trust in local communities to identify the critical barriers to physical activity that we can support them to test and learn how to remove.

These pilots will help us better understand how national campaigns and local activity can reinforce each other and how we can more intentionally develop locally led opportunities that address specific community needs and motivations. By testing new approaches in specific places, we will gain clearer insight into how to better connect the motivation created by This Girl Can with relevant, accessible interventions locally.

Proposed piece of work

Sport England is commissioning an evaluation and learning partner to support this work.

Our overarching evaluation question we want to answer is:

• To what extent does integrating a national campaign (that creates demand amongst inactive women) with place-based systemic working (where local organisations and communities collaborate to develop locally led opportunities to address specific barriers and needs of communities) lead to shared benefit that results in tailored and positive outcomes for our women?

We are interested in hearing how best to respond to this process and impact evaluation and how to collate and share the learning. In the attached Statement of Requirement we have identified several evaluation questions and learning objectives for the sector and women.

We believe a mixed method approach will be needed. We expect a particular focus on pulling together learning from this pilot, but the evaluation will also need to demonstrate (to some extent) the impact of this work, to inform any future delivery.

Combining a national campaign with place-based systemic ways of working is a new innovative approach. Given this, and that places are already involved in evaluation and learning through their place investment we believe the evaluation and learning partner will need to undertake a scoping phase. The aim of the scoping phase will be to develop and finalise an evaluation plan for this work that limits burden on Sport England Place Partners and locally trusted organisations that will be supporting women.