Almost a year ago, we announced the piloting of a new social enterprise at Raising the Roof – Altitude. This year, we have even more exciting news! We are officially releasing Altitude’s full Evaluation Report! The evaluation was conducted during the program’s first cohort (May-August 2018), and assesses the program’s success on various fronts.
Altitude and the Toque Campaign
What’s special about Altitude is it was conceptualized with the Toque Campaign in mind. What does this mean? Read further to find out! In an effort to revitalize the Toque Campaign in a way that generates greater returns in sales and that improves community outreach, Altitude was created.
What exactly is Altitude?
Altitude is a social enterprise initiative that provides youth (ages 18-29) facing barriers to employment with training and meaningful work experience. What this looks like is the youth participants have an opportunity to design, produce, promote and sell merchandise for the Toque Campaign. All proceeds raised by Altitude return to the social enterprise and support RtR’s mission, vision, and values.
First Cohort (April-August 2018)
During the first cohort in Spring 2018, six participants were recruited as RtR’s Brand Ambassadors. Their Team Leader served as the program’s seventh participant. Learn more about our first cohort here. With the support of our partner, Business in the Streets (BITS), Altitude provides professional training in business, sales and entrepreneurship, homelessness prevention advocacy, and essential pre-employment skills.
Learn More About Altitude
If you’re interested in learning more about Altitude, check out our Altitude webpage.
What Can I Expect from this Evaluation Report?
We are very proud of this Evaluation Report because, unlike traditional evaluations, a youth-led, participant-driven evaluation approach was used to give the program’s participants an active role throughout the evaluation. Essentially, this means that rather than prescribing what program success should look like, we asked the participants what program success means to them. As such, one of the evaluation’s core components is to assess success based on the participants’ suggested indicators. These indicators are:
- Graduation from program / Employment post-program
- Increased understanding around the issue of homelessness
- Attainment of sales experience
- Personal growth and development
- Skills development
This report will provide you with an in-depth understanding of the program’s strengths and successes. And of course, you will also learn about our lessons learned and areas for improvement!
Here are some highlights from the report:
- 100% of Brand Ambassadors from Cohort 1 completed the program
- 83% of Brand Ambassadors from Cohort 1 gained employment within 3-months of completing the program – a huge success considering that the remaining participant (the other 17%) decided to return to school rather than pursue employment
- The Brand Ambassadors attended 15 events (with over 350,000 people collectively in attendance) over the span of 15 weeks, securing:
- Increased brand exposure for Raising the Roof among approximately 56,000 to 75,000 people.
- Sales that contributed to the overall sales results:
To learn more about this unique evaluation process and our findings, make sure to check out the full Evaluation Report here. Too long to read? Don’t worry! You can check out our Executive Summary here.
I also want to appreciate how diverse and accepting the team is, and how safe this space was built to be. I think that heightened my learning. (Program Participant)
The team was very helpful and approachable, I feel comfortable and appreciate all the work they are doing for this startup (Program Participant)
I went from feeling generally unemployable to confident in my ability to show up and be a contributing team member. My self-esteem has improved over the course of this program and I’ve had to tackle issues I otherwise could have left alone, resulting in overall growth and maturation. (Program Participant)
Be sure to subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter or follow us on social media for more exciting updates.
[eca_cta id=”809″ align=”left” colour=”#cd1d00″]
