Two stretches of canal

Sahra Ali

The section through the town was heavily littered and there was very little visible wildlife, but around two miles downstream there were swans, herons, cormorants and much more vegetation.

So why?

How would you know if a clean-up worked?

If there was a clean-up on the town stretch the easy thing to report would be how many bags of litter were collected. That number is real but it does not tell you whether anything changed for the wildlife or for the people who live nearby.

I would want to compare the town stretch before and after the clean-up and against the downstream stretch over the same time. I would also want to ask who uses that part of the canal, whether they were involved and whether they noticed a difference. The people who walk past it every day are who it was really for but they are often not asked.

I think it is the same question for any social value work. Who was it meant for and did it reach them?