Map making 5: Impacts
If you follow the previous steps in the process, the impacts of your project should gradually emerge.
What is an impact?
There are different definitions and different types of impact. The definition we are using is:
Impact = The lasting effect of the outcome(s). How the project contributes to higher level goals or objectives.
Examples of impacts that community permaculture projects might have are:
- Improved health
- Increased household food security
- Increased village food security
- Improved nutritional status
- Improved diet
- Improved livelihoods
- Reduced domestic violence
- Greater financial stability and security
- Healthier Ecosystem
When your map represents your project, you should be able to identify the expected impacts of the project. If your map reads as a flow (more or less sequentially timewise) from left to right, activities leading to outputs, outputs leading to consequences / outcomes and consequences leading to further consequences /further outcomes, and so on, then impacts will likely be found towards the right hand side of your map.
Activity: Find and colour-code your impacts so that they stand out. I like to use orange but you can use any colour you like. You may find that some impacts are missing. Add them now.
Reminder: The impacts are the logical conclusion of the project’s activities, outputs and outcomes; the lasting effect of the work; and its contribution to higher level goals or objectives.
NB. Properly defined, an impact statement should specify who or what is impacted. If you want to assess the impacts, you will need to draft fully defined impact statements (your project may have these already). These do not need to be displayed on your Change Pathways Map. For practical reasons of space and legibility, use short labels for the impacts on your map. You may choose to add the full impact statement in the Kumu profile sidebar for each impact element.