Monitoring empowerment | VIA Don Bosco

VIA Don Bosco used SenseMaker to understand how young people in Madagascar and Bolivia feel empowered after finishing their studies.

In January 2017, VIA Don Bosco started a 5-year programme with as overall objective the social and professional integration of young people as active members of the society, i.e. finding a decent job (or self-employed) and feeling empowered after finishing their studies.

The first indicator of success (finding a job) is easy to measure. But how to understand and measure if the youngsters feel more empowered? VIA Don Bosco decided to use SenseMaker to yield more qualitative insights in the concept of empowerment, as seen by the youngsters themselves. The methodology was piloted in two countries, Bolivia and Madagascar.

In both countries, thousands of stories were collected in 2017, 2019 and 2021. The conclusions of the studies can be found in these reports:

Madagascar (in French):

Bolivia (in Spanish):

Overall process report with lessons learned (in English):