Pathways to Freedom
A Multi-City Public Private Partnership Against Human Trafficking
The Challenge
Pathways to Freedom, which is led by Humanity United and the NoVoFoundation, called on cities to challenge assumptions about who human trafficking survivors are, spur innovative citywide responses, and share local solutions. Pathways to Freedom is the third and final phase of the Partnership for Freedom, a public-private partnership created by Humanity United to spur innovative solutions to human trafficking challenges. Three cities, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Chicago were selected.
The evaluation challenge included:
Developing a learning and evaluation plan to capture the varied local responses.
Engaging with diverse stakeholders including city government, survivors, worker centers and the media.
Adapting an evaluation as the number of COVID-19 cases grew in the United States.
The Approach
In partnership with Sally Leiderman and Stephanie Halbert Jones from CAPD, we developed a learning and evaluation plan that focused heavily on qualitative data collection, meaning making, and document review. Instead of measuring the cities’ and partners’ response against a set of predetermined outcomes, we took an inductive approach. This increased our capacity to understand how success manifested in various contexts and what challenges emerged over time as the project unfolded.
“Our foundation had several excellent proposals for a recent evaluation, and I’m extremely glad we went with Social Insights. Zuri always keeps her eye on what matters most: the perspectives and needs of those we serve. Their proposal was the only one to include formal stakeholder feedback sessions where the communities would vet and approve fieldwork data. As Covid unfolded, she was quick to provide thoughtful alternatives, and her tech savviness means she can provide options that others simply can't. I’d work with Social Insights again in a heartbeat!.”
Jen Heeg | Manager of Strategy, Learning & Impact
Highlights
1.
We held a round of pre-interviews to set the stage for the larger evaluation and to build trust with the organizational partners.
2.
We added new methodologies to account for COVID’s impact on the Pathways partners. Including a social media analysis and virtual interviews.
3.
We engaged with diverse stakeholders including government representative, community based organizations, and survivors.