Results

"As a professional program evaluator, I see lots of non-profit programs. [World Savvy] takes evaluation seriously and has instilled a culture of learning and evaluation" Michael Quinn Patton, 2010

World Savvy's Impact

Over the past ten years, World Savvy's programs and services have demonstrated significant impact on students' knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors for global citizenship, as well as educators' capacity to consistently integrate teaching and learning for global competency into classroom instruction across disciplines. 

World Savvy is committed to ongoing evaluation and improvement of our programs as well as measurement of our impact on the students and teachers we serve. Each year, we conduct qualitative and quantitative evaluations of our programs as well as a developmental evaluation process to ensure ongoing reflection and adaptation.  

By the numbers:

Since founding, World Savvy has reached more than 250,000 youth and 2000 educators. During the 2010-11 school year, World Savvy served 4437 youth and 115 educators directly through our youth engagement programming. World Savvy served an additional 187 educators through our professional development and reached over 1,000 educators and 55,000 students through our online educators network. 

Some highlights from the 2010-11 program year include:

  • 100% of World Affairs Challenge coaches reported an increase in their students’ knowledge of the complexities and interdependence of world events
  • 87% of World Affairs Challenge coaches reported an increase in their students’ knowledge of geography, the historical forces that have shaped current issues, and their own culture and its relationship to the world
  • 70% of World Affairs Challenge coaches indicated a significant improvement in their students' research, public speaking and critical thinking skills. Students also indicated that skill enhancement was a large part of the Challenge, with over 90% saying that the program encourages critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity
  • 100% of World Affairs Challenge coaches reported an increase in their students’ ability to take informed action on an issue, and 75% of students said they plan to take action on the issues they learned about through the Challenge
  • 90% of educators in the Media & Arts Program reported that their students' content knowledge of sustainability improved
  • 79% of educators in the Media & Arts program reported that students have shown an increased concern and connection to issues of sustainability as a result of the program.
  • 70% of participating educators reported that through their involvement in the MAP, students were more openly able to express themselves
  • 80% of educators in the Media & Arts program reported a strengthening of student’s critical thinking skills

Beyond the numbers...

 “I found the [World Affairs Challenge] program accessible, meaningful and relevant for students. It supports critical thinking and problem solving skills that are crucial to being globally competent.” - World Affairs Challenge Coach

“I enjoyed working with my students on world related topics, challenging myself to try new ways to teach and encourage the future generation.” - World Affairs Challenge Coach

"Most of my students did not know what global warming was, and they were very interested in learning about it. They also were very interested in the social justice stories, as well as shocked that much of our waste is shipped abroad. All of this was new information for them.” - MAP Educator

“The MAP program gave my students the opportunity to explore issues and domains that are very honestly not addressed or valued in their school. For the first time in their school career, they were exposed to the fusing of expression, reflection, awareness and advocacy of local and global issues. It was an invaluable experience for them.” - MAP Educator

"Endless opportunities for growth. Growth as a student, a communicator, a globally knowledgeable citizen, and as a person. This is what I have gained from being involved with World Savvy for the past three years." -Kelsey Larson

Defining Global Competency

Efforts to define and assess the characteristics of globally competent persons are few and far between.  The task clearly has not received the attention it deserves.  Global awareness, for example, is sometimes defined in terms of a selective set of facts and geographic information that presumably everyone should know.  A knowledge-based assessment of global competence, however, runs headlong into the same problems associated with earlier attempts to define cultural literacy:  since no one can learn all the facts, who or what determines which facts are most important? Over the past several years, World Savvy has been committed to the task of defining and evaluation global competence.  During this process, we found that identifying appropriate items for validity that discriminate and capture change was challenging, not a unique problem when attempting to measure complex social and developmental concepts. World Savvy continues to work with an evaluation consultant to design and implement and evaluation process that effectively measures the complex nature of World Savvy's work in the realm of global competency.