As a charity, your effectiveness isn't measured in terms of profit and loss. Instead you are expected to look at your impact - what difference you are making. This is always hard to assess, but particularly so for a campaigning charity like Make Space for Girls. We can't say that a certain number of teenage girls have benefited from our work in a particular place, but even so we do think we are making a difference. And that's what we've set out in this year's Impact Report.
At present, we are focusing our activities on five different activities - raising awareness, engagement, research, policy and getting things built. The report sets out what we've achieved in each of these areas, from appearing on Radio 4 to working with Girl Guiding Scotland.
Some of our highlights this year include:
- The Parkwatch Report, which revealed for the first time just how male-dominated facilities for teenagers really are.
- Working in partnership on a project in Bradford which led to two spaces co-designed with teenage girls.
- Being part of the team which created the Safer Parks Guidance, because safety is perhaps the biggest barrier to girls and young women accessing public spaces.
- Our Researchers-in-Residence project, engaging with five groups to find out what girls really think about public space.
- Creating this website, giving people lots of information, research and background along with the tools to make changes themselves.
But one of the biggest highlights is, funnily enough, the work that we don't do ourselves. Because the biggest sign that our message is getting through is that other people are taking the idea and running with it – whether that’s councils writing the needs of teenage girls into planning policies and play strategies, local parks running their own events and consultations, or organisations across the board writing our campaign into their own work.
To find out more about all of these things and more detail on these projects and more, have a look at the full report, which you can download here.
