Numbers Don't Tell the Whole Story
Updated: Sep 15
This August, I had the privilege of leaving the UK heatwaves behind and heading back to Kenya. I had two aims in mind: to work with local partners to deliver another financial learning program and to take the opportunity to reconnect with our wider network of partners in Kenya.
It also seemed like the perfect opportunity to revisit some of the participants from our 2024 financial literacy programme and find out what had happened since we last saw them.
When we designed the program in Kenya back in 2024 with Kenya Union of Hair and Beauty Workers (KUHABWO) and Kenya Financial Education Centre (KEFEC), we knew how many people we intended to reach.
We had targets.
We had training schedules.
We had groups, trainers, venues, budgets and all the other things that make a programme work on paper.
But returning to Kenya reminded me of something I think funders and organisations working in international development and responsible supply chains say they understand but perhaps doesn't get talked about often enough:
The number of people who attend a program is not necessarily the best measure of its impact.
This time, I was back in Kenya working on a different intervention but with similar aims to our program with KUHABWO; to improve the financial literacy skills of participants. From our learning on the KUHABWO program we knew we needed to expand this program to include training of trainers, and also enhance income generation, business planning and gender empowerment modules, so all of these were included in the next successful proposal.
My first week was spent observing and advising the Training of Trainers. KEFEC were training new trainers in the delivery of their financial literacy program. I worked alongside Esther Muhia from Community Initiatives For Change and Development (CIFCAD) to deliver the training. Esther led the gender training, while I ensured that income generation and business skills were incorporated into the programme.
The feedback was extremely positive. And that matters. Because training a participant is one thing. Training someone who can then train others is something else entirely.
The value isn't confined to the person sitting in the training room.
It can travel.
Into a household.
Into a workplace.
Into a union.
Into a community.
Into the next generation of people who never attended the original program.
That is the ripple effect of capacity building.
And it is incredibly difficult to capture in a spreadsheet.
This latest program also reinforced another lesson: good programs are rarely as neat as they look in a funding proposal.
The venue wasn't ready.
Buses didn't always arrive on time.
Food and tea created their own logistical challenges.
People didn't always turn up.
Travel, accommodation and per diem arrangements were complicated.
Plus I had underestimated something as simple as allowing time for prayer and song at the beginning of morning and afternoon sessions. Ten minutes doesn't sound like much. But when you are designing a training program, ten minutes multiplied across multiple sessions and groups should become a real part of the program architecture. These are the realities of delivering programs with people, rather than simply delivering programs to people.
There was also an issue with an external presentation which needed to be repeated to one of the groups. This resulted in participants having to return and requiring additional accommodation, travel and per diem costs. This wasn't in the original proposal or budget. That may sound like a relatively small detail. But it speaks to a bigger question about who carries the cost when interventions need to adapt to reality?
If we are serious about meaningful remedy, meaningful engagement, meaningful participation and meaningful prevention of gender-based violence and harassment, flexibility has to be part of the equation.
We are taking the time to document what happened during the training, encourage participants to keep in touch with feedback from sessions they run, as well as offering opportunities for the participants to phone in for advice and support over a four-month period after the training.Why? Because for an intervention to be sustainable, we need longer term evidence and participants need longer term support.
Not simply evidence that people attended.
Evidence of what changed.
What they understood differently.
What they did differently.
And what happened afterwards.
So, the intervention doesn't simply end when the trainers leave.
It creates:
Another opportunity for dialogue.
Another opportunity for learning.
Another opportunity for change.
This is why I think we need to continue to rethink how we talk about program impact and how programs are funded.
Reach matters. But reach without depth is not necessarily impact:
Sometimes a program reaches hundreds of people and changes very little.
Sometimes a program reaches fewer people but changes the trajectory of their lives, their families, their organisations or their communities. And sometimes the person we trained becomes the person who trains ten more. Then those ten reach another hundred. Those numbers may never appear in the original project indicators.
But they are the impact.
For funders, the challenge is to recognise that successful programs need more than a launch and an end report.They need the opportunity to continue, adapt, deepen and grow.
Because sometimes the most important outcome isn't how many people were in the room.
It's what happened after they left it.
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