About the project

Racialized and newcomer populations have been disproportionately impacted in terms of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and related job losses. Most authoritative pandemic advice still does not account for the variety of literacy levels, language needs, eligibility concerns, and information consumption patterns of newcomers. This critical gap is not new, but it threatens the health and integration of newcomers more than ever. To contribute to overcoming this challenge, Refugee 613 with IRCC financial support has operated the Newcomer Info Hub by providing an online hub for COVID-19 information tailored to newcomers. Refugee 613 intervenes on 3 axes:

1. Content corner (Slack and Facebook group)
2. Multilingual info back
3. Content production (infographics, bulletins, videos, etc.).

Overall, the main objective of the Newcomer Info Hub is to support the settlement and integration outcomes of newcomers through improved availability of appropriate COVID-19 information and improve stakeholder capacity to meet newcomer information needs. Indeed, the newcomer Info Hub targeted two key stakeholders: the newcomer and the newcomer service provider.

About my role

My role was to evaluate the Info Hub project. It was a formative evaluation with the purpose of: i) measuring the impact of the content production component of the Newcomer Info Hub project on the newcomers’ capacity to access appropriate COVID-19 information and newcomer service providers’ capacity to meet newcomer information needs and ii) assessing the overall Newcomer Info Hub project implementation and make a data-informed recommendation for the project.

The idea was to objectively tell the impact story of the content production piece of the Newcomer Info Hub project and have a clear picture of elements to consider with the intent of improving the quality of the project.

About my accomplishment

As part of this evaluation, a combination of quantitative and qualitative data collection approaches was prioritized. I have collected data through semi-structured interviews and surveys from two main units of observation (Newcomer, Newcomer service provider). From an ethical perspective, we ensured that the data gathering tools are in a language that participants can easily understand. Indeed, the newcomer survey was translated into 4 different languages including Arabic, Farsi, English, and Spanish. Additionally, we made sure to obtain consent from participants, explain the purpose of the evaluation, and how the data will be analyzed, and made clear beforehand that they can leave the interview or stop filling out the survey if they feel uncomfortable.

The evaluation was conducted according to 6 evaluation criteria (Relevance, Reach, Accessibility, Effectiveness, Satisfaction & Lessons Learned, and Impact). A full evaluation report was submitted to the Refugee 613 team including a summary executive that highlighted key findings for each evaluation question attached to each evaluation criteria. In addition, the evaluation report contained a recommendation section that pointed out the strengths and the areas of improvement that need to be considered moving forward.