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Since 2000, CitySprouts has been developing, implementing, and maintaining school gardens in collaboration with Cambridge, Massachusetts, public school communities. Designed as a blended in-school and out-of-school model, CitySprouts works with parents, volunteers, teachers, and other school staff to integrate its programs into existing school curricula and to promote healthy food choices and environmental stewardship for children, youth, and families. CitySprouts programs operate in all 12 of the Cambridge Public School District’s elementary and middle schools.
CitySprouts relies heavily on feedback from teachers, school principals, and youth participants to assess the effectiveness of their school programs. Using a spreadsheet, the organization continuously tracks indicators such as teachers’ use of the school garden, attendance and participation in program workshops, and the number of volunteers and their hours. The organization also conducts a biannual survey of teachers to assess their experience using the CitySprouts garden and has plans to update the survey to help measure the program’s impact on teacher practice and effectiveness as well. Another survey goes out annually to youth participants to help assess the impact of its programs for youth.
Recently, in order to measure the impact of its youth intern program, which CitySprouts plans to expand to reach all 12 participating schools in 2010, the organization also conducted phone interviews with a sample of 2008 youth participants and parents, in addition to a review of past survey data. Key indicators tracked as part of the survey included: relationships with adults and peers, stewardship of environment and community, and scholarship/learning about health, nutrition, and growing food. CitySprouts viewed this assessment of its youth impact program as having a twofold purpose—first, to provide them with data to make changes to the program and second, to inform the development of new evaluation tools and processes.
CitySprouts presents the results of its surveys in two distinct reports, a curriculum report released in the summer and an annual report published in the fall of each year.
CitySprouts’ commitment to performance measurement has informed the expansion of their existing programs and has enabled the organization to identify feasible means for achieving their goals. Based on the data it collected on its youth intern program, CitySprouts has re-designed their post-program survey, changed their program schedule, and developed a new program curriculum that aligns with desired outcomes. For example, having identified social relationships as a recurring theme in youth responses to the program, CitySprouts doubled contact hours with their garden coordinator in order to increase interaction time and encourage the fostering of relationships between the participants.
CitySprouts has focused on developing its own set of key measures independent of those requested by its funders and regularly adjusts its key measures to reflect changes made to the programs. For example, having set an ambitious target for foundation funding one year, CitySprouts was then faced with the challenge of locating alternative resources in a tough economic climate. This led to the implementation of a new strategy focused on engaging a broader network of stakeholders to take ownership of particular aspects of its garden programs, rather than relying predominantly on its own resources. For example, CitySprouts focused on advising the Cambridge Public School Science Department in the revision of its district-wide curriculum to add garden lessons rather than writing the curriculum itself. CitySprouts learned that building these substantive partnerships designed to foster local commitment and ownership, are critical to ensuring financial sustainability and maximizing social impact. Accordingly, CitySprouts is working on introducing new key measures that assess these partnerships.
CitySprouts' Sample Survey: This survey was used to assess and understand the use of CitySprouts' programming in conjunction with school gardens by teachers in Cambridge.
