Success & Impact
How we define progress
SHABELLE is early in its work, so this page describes the outcomes we are building toward and how we intend to measure them rather than reporting numbers we cannot yet substantiate.
An honest starting point
Why there are no statistics on this page yet
You will not find placement percentages, admission counts, scholarship totals or student numbers here, because we do not have verified figures to report and we are not going to invent them. A number with nothing behind it is worse than no number at all, and the education and career space has more than enough of those.
There are also no testimonials or success stories on this page, because the people we work with have not given us permission to publish their experiences. If and when they do, and the outcomes are documented, they will appear here accurately.
What follows is what we are actually working toward and how we intend to know whether it is working.
What we measure
Six things that tell us whether this is working
Outcome measurement in education and career work is difficult, because the results belong to the participant and often take years to appear. These are the nearer-term signals we watch.
Clarity
Whether a person leaves a session or a conversation with a clearer idea of their next step than they arrived with. This is the most basic thing we can measure and often the most valuable.
We ask participants directly, before and after, whether their next step is clearer.
Preparation
Whether people have something concrete to show for the work: a finished resume, a practiced interview, a college list they understand and can justify.
We track completion of tangible artifacts rather than attendance alone.
Confidence
Whether someone feels more able to handle the process than they did. Confidence is not the same as readiness, but a person without it rarely takes the next step.
Measured through participant self-assessment at the end of a program.
Connection
Whether useful contact happened between people preparing and the institutions or employers they are preparing for. This is the bridge actually being crossed.
Tracked through employer and education partner engagement and follow-up.
Access
Whether the people who most need support are actually reaching it, including those navigating systems without prior family experience.
Reviewed through who participates, not just how many.
Sustained progress
Whether a next step actually turns into the step after it. A prepared resume that leads to an interview matters more than a resume alone.
Follow-up with participants after a program concludes.
Intended impact
What we are trying to change
The condition SHABELLE is working against is not a shortage of effort or ability. It is that the route from education into opportunity is unevenly legible. People with family experience of the process tend to navigate it more easily than people without, and the gap persists well past graduation.
Narrowing that gap is the work. Not by lowering the bar, but by making the path understandable to everyone who has to travel it.
In the near term
People leave SHABELLE programming with concrete preparation, a clearer direction and a next step they can name.
In the medium term
More students from the communities we serve move into education and career paths they chose deliberately rather than fell into.
In the long term
A Minneapolis where the connection between education and opportunity does not depend on who someone's parents were or what they already knew.
Reporting
How verified results will appear here
As SHABELLE's programming and partnerships mature, this page will carry measured results. When it does, every figure will be one we can substantiate: participation we recorded, outcomes we followed up on, feedback participants agreed to be quoted on.
Testimonials will be attributed only with explicit permission from the person giving them. Program metrics will be reported with the time period and the group they cover, not as unattributed headline numbers.
If something did not work, we would rather say so than leave a gap that implies it did. That is what makes the rest of the page worth reading.
