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Taylor Swenski, 

Evaluating Impact and Effectiveness: Focus Groups with Chicago Grows Food for Program Improvement and Expansion

            I first began working for Chicago Grows Food (CGF) as an evaluation intern the summer of 2022, though I officially began the Steans Center Fellowship this past summer. CGF is a grassroots, urban growing collective which aims towards food justice and food sovereignty in neighborhoods on the south and west sides of Chicago. They provide individuals who live in food insecure neighborhoods with the tools and education needed to grow their own produce, free of charge. Since the inception of the organization during the COVID-19 lockdowns, they have provided 11,000 homes across 61 different community areas with gardening supplies. Because CGF is a fairly young organization, evaluation is critical to improving, refining, and expanding their programs, as well as to obtaining data needed for grant applications. Therefore, my fellowship project was an evaluation consisting of four focus groups designed to learn about: (1) areas of improvement for CGF programs, (2) areas of impact for CGF programs, and (3) the best methods to measure success and effectiveness of CGF programs.

Project Information

            Timeline. Though I have been interning with CGF for over a year, the present evaluation project began in January 2023 and will be completed by early Fall of this year. Winter tasks comprised major preparation stages, including drafting focus group questions, protocol, training CGF staff to facilitate focus groups, piloting the questions with participants, and recruitment. The four focus groups were conducted in late March and the rest of the spring was spent on coding the data, which included training and supervising undergraduate assistants to aid in these tasks. Over the summer I completed my official fellowship hours, during which I conducted a thematic analysis on the focus group data and prepared dissemination materials such as reports and presentations. This fall, I will be delivering these presentations to CGF staff so that the organization can begin planning how to act upon the findings.

            Goals. The project consisted of both long- and short-term goals. Originally, we had the overarching goal of concluding the project by the end of spring. However, the timeline was pushed back to a summer/fall end date. Short-term goals were sectioned into stages (i.e. preparation phase, data collection phase, data analysis phase, dissemination phase) and though they were delayed, these phases were ultimately achieved. Evaluation-specific goals of learning about areas of improvement, impact, and how to measure effectiveness were all achieved with the collected data. Similarly, we aimed to recruit at least 12 people for the focus groups. With a final sample size of 19 participants, we surpassed our original recruitment goal.

            Products and Deliverables. This project yielded several products, some of which CGF will be able to use for years to come. The most salient product is the data, which can be utilized for program improvement and grant applications. I delivered the data in the form of two brief reports and three presentations. The report was saved as a template for editing by CGF staff whenever they need to present future evaluation findings. Likewise, other major products that can be reused and repurposed in the future are the focus group protocol and codebook. I also trained CGF staff on how to facilitate focus groups, and this hour-long training was recorded and saved on the CGF drive as a capacity-building resource that can be returned to at any future point in time.

Future Directions

            There are various future directions for this evaluation work at CGF. Primarily, implementing findings will be of the utmost priority in order to demonstrate to CGF service recipients that the organization is listening and committed to their ideas and concerns. My job as evaluation consultant will be to prepare the project for dissemination, both to CGF staff and CGF's service base. However, once I have done so, CGF staff will need to create concrete and feasible goals for incorporating the data gathered on areas for improvement. Given that I am continuing with CGF through the fall, I will be able to aid in this process with skills such as logic modeling and strategic planning. Additionally, a broader future direction lies in determining how this evaluation work can become more sustainable for CGF to conduct with internal staff and resources. CGF, for instance, may not always have access to graduate student interns capable of leading such projects. Therefore, I will need to collaborate with staff to determine the best methods for building evaluation capacity within the organization. One fruitful pathway to sustainability may be in conducting trainings with CGF staff on data collection and analysis tools, such as the training I delivered on facilitating focus groups. Such an effort can be replicated with other evaluation skills. Furthermore, I can create evaluation templates (e.g. protocols, surveys, dissemination reports) which can be reused and replicated for future purposes.

Connections to Social Inequity      

            Due to decades of systemic racial and ethnic discrimination, food access in Chicago is far from equitable. Indeed, neighborhoods inhabited by predominantly Black and Latinx residents face disproportionate levels of food insecurity (Chicago Department of Public Health, 2023). Communities can regain power over their health and food choices by growing their own food. Yet, lack of gardening knowledge and prior experience, as well as the money required for materials and tools, can prove to be major barriers to taking this next step towards food sovereignty and health equity. Additionally, environmental racism has yielded the ground soil infertile and toxic in many Black and Latinx neighborhoods across the city. CGF's programs provide the materials (e.g. soil, seeds, grow bags, raised beds, etc.) and educational resources needed to begin one's growing journey, thus, paving the way for food justice in areas of the city which are too often plagued by food deserts and swamps. Evaluation directly aids CGF's programs by demonstrating areas where programs can be strengthened, as well as highlighting program impacts, such as cost savings and health improvements, that can improve the organization's chances of receiving grants. Conducting participatory evaluation work gives CGF's service recipients a voice in the future of programs which have a substantial effect on their daily health choices. In all, evaluation fortifies the food justice and food sovereignty work in which CGF engages, thereby reducing social inequity across Chicago.

Reflections and Conclusions

I have learned numerous lessons throughout my journey with CGF. For instance, I found that I thoroughly enjoyed leading an evaluation project from start to finish. Though it was daunting at times to trust in my skills, I believe my strengths are well-suited to evaluation work and I hope to pursue it as a future career. Furthermore, I learned about the importance of flexibility and adaptability when working with community organizations. While we may be able to control our graduate coursework, for example, working with communities, particularly under-resourced grassroots organizations, presents a set of challenges and barriers that are often outside of our control. As such, it was necessary for me to use creative problem solving and flexibility while managing barriers, including recruitment difficulties, timeline delays, and linguistic considerations. It was also my first time working in the food justice arena, and I felt incredibly proud that my work was addressing real-world issues. In all, though I faced challenges, I have grown both personally and professionally through my project with CGF, which contributed directly to food justice and reducing social inequity for Black and Latinx communities in Chicago.

 

References

 

Chicago Department of Public Health. (2023). Chicago Health Atlas. The Population Health                        Analytics Metrics Evaluation (PHAME) Center, & Metopio. Accessed from                                                https://www.chicagohealthatlas.org/

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