Adaptive Evaluation for Project MOVE with SEWA’s Enterprises

Imago is working with SEWA Bharat and Gates Foundation (BMGF) to help scale some of the SEWA owned Social Enterprises (SEs) through testing discrete and impactful interventions by building a grassroots accelerator for SEs in order to increase both their revenues as well as women’s empowerment over a period of 5 years.

This collaboration will generate an in-depth understanding of what works and what does not work in supporting women collective enterprises becoming financially sustainable while scaling their impact in SEWA and in India. 

 

 

Imago is supporting SEWA’s implementation of the MOVE project through:

Designing an intervention that works & preparing for the Mentorship program

Imago will custom design a learning environment focusing on two preselected SEs in Year 1, and an additional three in Year 2 to iteratively measure and test a variety of approaches in order to co-create a final version of an accelerator that best meets the needs of SEWA SEs.

From Prototypes to Protocols

After a year of intense work with 2 SEs and another year with the other 3 preselected SEs, the accelerator should be ready to be translated into modules, protocols, and training capacity.

Phase 2 will focus on SEWA’s internal capacity to take the accelerator to other SEs as well as the Peer Learning component. The SEs that have gone through the program would form a network to help each other through the scaling up process.

Imago is supporting SEWA’s implementation of the MOVE project through:

A rigorous adaptive evaluation of interventions within SEWA’s accelerator that allows us to know what works and does not work in supporting the financial sustainability and scalability of women’s collective enterprises as well as women’s agency.

A set of protocols and documented processes that SEWA will be able to use beyond the 5 SEs included in the MOVE project.

Robust tracking mechanisms including tools such as process monitoring for SEWA to follow incomes and agency data in women collectives, as well as the capacity to guide the necessary organizational shifts for enterprise long-term sustainability.

Expected outcomes of the project

Expected outcomes by 2023 include business sustainability in SEs that go through the accelerator coupled with strong women’s empowerment, delivering impact that lasts. These outcomes would then provide the basis to develop SE and accelerator models that work at the grassroots and can be adapted to more SEs in SEWA Bharat’s network, and replicated in other contexts. IMAGO would also be involved in coaching and supporting the SEWA team through the duration of the BMGF grant, helping create the assets that will stay beyond the grant period.

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Bi-Annually Learning Workshops

Given the learning and adaptive nature of this enterprise, a key activity of this collaboration is the development of bi-annual Learning Workshop Series that are organized jointly by SEWA, BMGF and IMAGO. This series has the goal of fostering a community of thinkers and practitioners who can consistently share insights on the Adaptive Evaluation of Project MOVE with Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) Enterprises. 

Each Learning Workshop focuses on a dedicated theme, involving multiple stakeholders to  discuss global and national experiences alongside sharing lessons from and for the evaluation. By synthesizing evidence and learnings from research, policy, and practice, these sessions will enrich our understanding and help disseminate results at the end of the project. The LearningWorkshops will provide us a forum to create a working group of experts from different fields who can provide regular feedback and learn from our journey through the next 4 years.