Monitor intermediate outcomes

The actions you planned, which you will have identified as necessary to reach your long term goal of reducing inequality, may include thing like:

• new policies on wage setting practices by private companies
• changes in the laws around discrimination or legal protections
• new services set up to extend health care
• setting up bursaries for older girls to complete school
• launching a social media campaign around attitudes to certain ethnic groups
• changing the narratives around gender inequality

Within your theory of change, you can think of achieving these actions as intermediate outcomes. Making these types of changes will be a great achievement of which you can be proud. You should also monitor whether or not they lead to you achieving your long term goal to make sure that they lead to a reduction in the inequalities you are focusing on.

Sometimes the improvements will begin to show after a year or two, and build up over time – more equal health, education, and improved outcomes for disadvantaged groups. But you may find that although intermediate outcomes were achieved they did not lead to the long term goal of inequality reduction. Identifying why this was the case will help you and others in the future. For example, new bursaries for older children to complete school may not have been taken up due to stigma associated with them or because they were not generous enough. New laws around discrimination and legal protection may not be properly enforces, and hence had little effect on inequalities.

Do not be discouraged. Achieving long term, reduction in inequality takes time, and sustained effort. Even if there is apparently no immediate change in the levels of inequality your actions may well be successful over a longer period.

Most importantly, make contact with us! We would love to hear about what hasn’t worked as well as you had hoped and your successes and share these with others!