Why We Partnered

The University of Minnesota (UMN) is highly respected for its expertise in framing and supporting multi-country evaluations and assessing gender and youth-centered project outcomes and impacts. It also has particular expertise in maintaining integrity of measurements across linguistic and cultural nuances, and significant experience in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya.

UMN will be the external evaluator and learning partner for The MasterCard Foundation’s Learning, Earning, and Saving Program, which aims to test and support the development of holistic approaches for enabling economic opportunities for disadvantaged youth. UMN will lead the design of a comprehensive monitoring, evaluation and learning framework to capture and share learning across three distinct yet complementary projects implemented by CAP, Fundación Paraguaya and Swisscontact. By prioritizing ongoing learning, UMN and The MasterCard Foundation will illuminate key success factors and challenges, and help to fill a significant knowledge gap in this arena. UMN will support The Foundation to monitor comprehensively, evaluate selectively, and learn continuously.

Anticipated Impact

• Draw comparisons and evaluations within and across the programs.
• Quickly identify anything unexpected along the way that should be enhanced or corrected to maximize the impact on youth.
• Discover what the youth and data are telling us each year.
• Increase partners’ capacity to monitor and evaluate for continuous improvement.
• Improve quality of the overall final program evaluation.
• Communicate new learning and knowledge in the nexus space in a highly credible manner.