CASE STUDY
Wellbeing impacts of a financial resilience program in the Kimberley region.
What was the challenge?
The Wunan Aboriginal Corporation wanted to understand the wellbeing impacts of a financial resilience program they were delivering in the Kimberley region. The program provided financial counselling, capability and support services to local Aboriginal people.
Interplay collaborated with Wunan Aboriginal Corporation, Ninti One and Good Shepherd Microfinance to tackle the project.
How did we help solve the problem?
We worked with Wunan Aboriginal Corporation and the community to co-design a tailored version of the Interplay Wellbeing Framework to meet their evaluation needs.
Based on the framework designed, relevant indicators were selected from the Interplay Project's suite of scientifically validated community indicators.
New indicators were also developed to create measures of things not yet covered, like 'money knowledge' and 'financial resilience'.
A survey was designed by the project team and administered by local Aboriginal researchers.
The Interplay team applied our 'whole of system' approach to statistical analysis to create a map of the most effective pathways to wellbeing.
Mapping ways to improve wellbeing
This Interplay Map shows the strongest pathways to wellbeing based on the data, represented by arrows between each key point. The higher the number next to the arrow, the stronger the relationship between the two points it connects.
The map shows that empowerment of people results in financial resilience and confidence in working with numbers and filling out forms.
This increased confidence leads to improved money knowledge, which has a positive impact on mental health and wellbeing.
This means that if we try and teach people 'money knowledge' without also improving their skills and confidence with 'numbers and forms', the training may have limited success.
“The most important thing that Interplay mapping shows in this project is that to improve people's mental health and wellbeing, we need to build their knowledge about money and their capacity to fill out forms.
“We needed to look at the whole picture to understand how to create long term change”.
— Shez Cairney, Interplay CEO
Services
Co-designed a ‘story of change’ and evaluation methodology
Built evaluation capabilities at the grassroots level in communities
Created a tailored mobile survey app
Holistic data analysis to identify pathways for change
Evaluation data displayed visually on an Interplay Map
Interplay mapping to inform program design to optimise wellbeing outcomes
Do you want to understand what pathways lead to better program outcomes?
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