Ten Year Review
To mark the completion of our national Strategic Development Funded project and ten years since the launch of the Centenary Project, a new evaluation has been undertaken. Building on our mid-term evaluation published in 2022, the new report continues to evidence the impact that the Centenary Project has had on youth, children’s and families’ ministry in the Diocese of Sheffield over the last ten years.
The report headlines are:
- Across our funded SDF programme, we far exceeded almost all the targets that had been set for the project. Centenary Project churches have a higher proportion of under 18s in their worshipping community.
- Having a Centenary Project Worker has enabled parishes to have more capacity and missional energy for engaging with children and young people.
- The Centenary Project offers an innovative approach to resourcing children and youth ministry and is an effective model of appointing children and youth workers to contexts that wouldn’t otherwise have been able to.
- The children and youth ministry workforce has increased with more churches having a worker.
- Children and youth ministry has become more prominent and embedded in the life of the Diocese of Sheffield.
You can read the full report here:
Mid-Term Evaluation
Throughout 2021, the Church Army Research Unit was commissioned to undertake an independent evaluation of the Centenary Project to assess its impact. The reports were published in early March and are overwhelmingly positive. The evidence shows that the Centenary Project is making a difference to lives of children, young people and families in the Diocese of Sheffield and positively impacting disadvantaged communities.
The evaluation report includes six case studies, five of which illustrate the project’s impact in deprived communities. Interview data revealed comments about the economic challenges experienced by children, young people and families in the communities in which they work. The Centenary Project seeks to address these challenges through establishing programmes of activities including parent and toddler groups, school uniform banks, after-school clubs and youth groups. Throughout the pandemic, Centenary Project Workers have gone even further, providing online activities, delivering resources and when restrictions allowed holding outdoor activities.
Participants in Centenary Project groups were surveyed and questions about the impact all received high average scores. Statements about feeling ‘accepted’, ‘supported’, ‘belonging’ and ‘understood’ scored particularly strongly. The research uncovered many stories and examples that illustrate the Centenary Project’s impact on children, young people and families’ wider wellbeing.