OUR OUTCOMES
20,000+
young men mentored
74%
improvement in mental health
78%
reduction in antisocial behaviours
77%
improvement in life skills and outlook
Peer pressure, I can now see it more clearly and know how to avoid it. I’ve learnt how to respect people’s boundaries. I learnt peer pressure and the social cues on what to expect when someone is trying to pressure me into a situation.
Tom, 16, Top Blokes Participant
Our mission is to challenge and nurture young males to be their best selves.
We do this by delivering social education and mentoring programs to young males aged 10-24 years while evaluating our work to ensure we are achieving social impact.
Our current Program evaluation framework, developed in conjunction with Ernst & Young, measures Program impact, in particular, the degree of improvement in mental health, lifestyle behaviours and attitudes, knowledge and skill sets. The Program's principles focus on strength-based, harm minimisation and innovative delivery methods to cut through and really impact the young men.
Between 2015-2019, Top Blokes Foundation commissioned EY to undertake a 3-year Social Impact Study of the Top Blokes Program.
The purpose of EY's Social Impact Evaluation of the Program was to robustly measure the impact of the Program on Participant outcomes and enable the organisation to understand opportunities to strengthen the Program's impact.
What was done
The approach comprised four interdependent elements:
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Longitudinal surveys of control (student) and intervention (Participant) groups;
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Additional qualitative feedback and reflections from Participants after completing the Program;
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Group interviews with the youth workers who delivered the Program; and
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Additional data collection from a sample of schools to identify the cost-benefit ratio of the Program.
What was found
Our recently completed 3-year Study with EY – which looked at how young men’s health was improved by the Top Blokes Mentoring Program – revealed the following:
Young males are 4 times better off experiencing the Top Blokes Program and having a mentor than young males who don’t have a mentor.
The Program helped increase a young man’s attendance at school and reduced the rate of detention and suspension, in some cases between 20-100%.
The study found that the Program saved schools 9 times the initial cost of the Program and helped schools reduce the time they spent dealing with boys' behaviour. Schools saved on average $33,000 in avoided time spent while the boys were in the Program and an additional $20,000 in avoided time spent post-Program.
The top three outcomes that achieved the greatest improvements were:
