The Team Kenya: Final Evaluation Report

This 57-page evaluation report shares findings of an assessment conducted to evaluate The Team Kenya, a television and radio serial drama designed to promote cooperative solutions and engagement across ethnic and political divides to build democracy in Kenya. Produced by Search for Common Ground as part of a multi-country campaign, the Kenyan series focused on ethnic tolerance and retribution, land disputes, mob violence and police impunity, gender violence, corruption and bribery, economic and social inequalities, and youth unemployment. Outreach activities to support the media work, has promoted alternative, peaceful approaches to resolving these contentious societal issues and has helped shift the way that citizens and their leaders interact with the other. The evaluation found that not only did the series prompt attitude changes, but also inspired positive actions on the ground. 

The final evaluation was carried out in September 2011 while the last episodes of the third season, and the last of the outreach activities, were underway. A Log frame-driven, multi-method evaluation was conducted using a combination of quantitative surveys, case studies, and focus groups. The Logframe for this project was action oriented, i.e it did not just assess knowledge and attitude changes, but sought to identify actions and their link to The Team. For example, the case study approach which was to identify specific cases of action and transformation, specifically searched for a direct answer to the question of how much The Team contributed to such actions.

Direct links were established between The Team as a television drama, its outreach activities, especially mobile cinema screenings, and the actual actions on the ground. Main objectives in the Logframe aimed at making "citizens become more effective at engaging constructively on governance issues at local level through increased knowledge and skills of collaborative problem solving," and to see "strengthened capacity of partner CSOs to address governance issues in innovative ways." The case studies discussed in this final evaluation report and in the midterm evaluation demonstrate that The Team succeeded in achieving such objectives due to its inspiring, relevant and constructive messages and processes.
In addition, a public survey produced results confirming, with statistical significance, that The Team indeed contributed to positive changes in respondents’ awareness, knowledge, and attitude. Regular viewers of The Team significantly demonstrated more positive attitudes compared to respondents from earlier surveys, and compared to those who did not watch the drama at all or watched irregularly. As stated in the report, the consistent statistically significant differences, always in favour of those who watched the drama regularly, provide powerful evidence that the effect of The Team on such attitudes is real.
The following are the main findings of the final evaluation:

• The Team succeeded to a great extent in achieving the Logframe objectives on knowledge, awareness, attitudinal, and action levels.
• The success of The Team applied to citizens, community groups, and civil society organisations.
• The dosage of watching The Team was the strongest predictor of attitudinal changes as expected with the Logframe.
• Although the research proved an improvement in citizens’ views of governments’ responsiveness to issues addressed in The Team, there is no evidence that such improvement could be attributed to The Team.
• The success regarding attitudinal changes was well proven qualitatively, quantitatively, and statistically according to this research.
• The success regarding actions by citizens, community groups, and civil society was measured qualitatively, with sufficient spread across all regions where The Team activities took place.
• Outreach activities, especially mobile cinema screenings, contributed directly to achieving the Logframe’s action objectives. It is not evident from this research whether the drama by itself could have led to generating actions at citizen, community, and civil society levels.

The overall conclusion of the evaluation is that "The Team in Kenya touched the hearts and minds of many, helped them to see issues of grave concern to them with constructive lenses, with the aim of effecting change on individual and institutional levels. In the process, The Team inspired openness, dialogue, and engagement with one another to heal old wounds, and to build peaceful communities. The Team, by design, and thanks to its outreach activities, motivated individuals, groups, and organisations to translate their inspiration by The Team into action on the ground. They took it on themselves to start up activities and projects aimed at re-building trust among their fellow Kenyans, channeling youth’s energy in positive directions, and sustaining healthy dialogue on issues raised in The Team, and which resonate very much with their realities."