How YMCA Turns Data into Impact to Improve Outcomes of Youth-At-Risk

Understanding programme and sector outcomes in the social service sector are key to ensuring impactful interventions. NCSS developed the SEF to help social service agencies (SSAs) measure and articulate the impact of their programmes.

For the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), adopting the SEF has strengthened their ability to evaluate their Vocational and Soft Skills Programme (VaSSP) for youths to enter the workforce or return to education. We speak to Amos Chua, Head of Department, Youth Support (At-risk) on their journey. He shares how the benefits have rippled across the agency in three key areas: staff mindset, service user understanding, and stakeholder engagement. 

Youths engaging with children as part of early childhood vocational training.

Why did YMCA apply the SEF to your programme?

“We adopted SEF to bring clarity and accountability to our work with youth-at-risk. SEF gave us the structure to ask: Are we truly changing lives?”

“One of the key challenges we faced was not knowing whether youth remained in employment or education after completing the programme. That uncertainty made us realise we needed a better way to track long-term outcomes and understand the real impact of our efforts.”

What benefits have you seen since using the SEF?

“Measuring impact has helped us communicate our work more effectively, especially to funders and stakeholders. While it has not drastically changed the way we deliver VaSSP, it has given us the tools to present our outcomes with greater clarity and confidence.”

“For our team, it has built awareness around the importance of data and encouraged us to think more critically about how to track progress. Our youth service users too can also better understand their journey.”

“It also strengthened transparency and trust in YMCA among our stakeholders, helped justify continued support and opened conversations with funders, who value evidence-based outcomes.”

Youths joining the Vocational and Soft Skills Programme.

What would you say to other agencies considering the SEF?

“Our experience shows that structured impact evaluation can lead to better outcomes and stronger funding support."

"NCSS has been key to our impact evaluation journey. Beyond providing the framework and guidance, they helped us strengthen our data collection and analysis processes. They also pointed us to resources and tools that we could tap on to build internal capabilities."

Start your outcome evaluation journey today

SSAs can apply for the SG60 Towards Sustainability Fund to kickstart their capabilities in measuring, monitoring, and reporting the effectiveness of their programmes.