Tracking change, driving opportunity: How Groundbreaker strengthens women’s economic empowerment in Uganda

As part of leonardo’s education and consultancy services, we worked with Groundbreaker to strengthen and further develop their Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) processes. We were able to simplify complexity and gain clarity for effective impact management & communication.

Groundbreaker, a German-Ugandan non-profit in the education sector with a dual mission in Uganda of creating sustainable pathways out of poverty and fostering a more diverse tech talent pipeline, joined the first leonardo. academy (Impact Pioneer) cohort alongside 19 other organisations. Building on their existing, well-founded ToC, they took part in the follow-up individual consultancy to streamline their indicator framework and survey processes. The aim was to improve participant response behaviour, strengthen data quality, and ensure their IMM work continues to reflect the transformative impact they deliver.

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"We’re grateful for the time Manu from leonardo.impact invested in supporting us to strengthen our M&E system. For Groundbreaker, showing our impact with real data is extremely important, and Manu’s expertise helped us take our frameworks to the next level. We truly appreciate the opportunity and are now putting an even stronger monitoring and evaluation strategy into practice."

- Leoni Rossberg, Co-Founder and Managing Director

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Explore how the leonardo. academy, funded by the BMWE and the European Union, can help your organisation strengthen its impact measurement and management.

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The customer: Groundbreaker 

Groundbreaker is a social education start-up with a fully residential scholarship programme based in Bukerere, a town just outside Kampala, Uganda’s capital. It is dedicated to equipping young women with in-demand skills in Software Engineering, Business, and Artificial Intelligence, enabling them to launch impactful careers in the technology sector. With a dual mission of providing sustainable pathways out of poverty and fostering a more diverse global tech talent pipeline, the organisation selects highly motivated African women aged 18 to 25, many from financially constrained backgrounds who would otherwise have limited access to higher education or professional training.

The non-profit campus in Bukerere offers a fully immersive learning environment with reliable internet, modern equipment, accommodation, meals, healthcare, and professional training in partnership with leading companies. This supportive setting allows students to focus entirely on their development, building both technical expertise and career readiness. All costs are covered through the backing of international sponsors, private donors, and institutional grants, ensuring that talent – not personal circumstance – determines opportunity.

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The Challenge: Creating a lean and clear Impact Framework

Groundbreaker already had a strong approach to Impact Measurement and Management, guided by a holistic Theory of Change and underpinned by longitudinal studies to track change over time and demonstrate their contribution. Data was collected at multiple stages of the programme, covering key outcome areas such as economic agency, self-efficacy and confidence, technical skills, and employment outcomes. Early results from Cohort 2 illustrated this impact clearly: 100% graduation, a 93% employment rate within three months, an average self-efficacy score of 5/5, and a 33-fold increase in average monthly income compared with pre-programme levels.

As the framework evolved over time, it became increasingly broad and complex. Some indicators offered limited value in demonstrating impact, while others that could capture important changes were either missing or not yet fully defined. Surveys had also grown longer and more detailed, with many open-ended questions, which risked causing participant fatigue and affecting data quality.

The collaboration therefore focused on refining the indicator set, developing a more targeted framework centred on evaluating participant outcomes, and designing shorter, more focused surveys. This included defining robust indicators for agency, aligning measures with the team’s on-the-ground observations, and ensuring results could be communicated effectively to donors, funders, and the public. The refinement process followed recognised principles from empirical research methods, ensuring both rigour and reliability in all future assessments.

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The approach: Simplify complexity

The consulting work began with a detailed review of Groundbreakers’ existing indicators and survey tools. Each indicator and its related questions were assessed for internal relevance as a measure to improve programme delivery, external value as evidence of impact, alignment with the Theory of Change, and overall usability and significance. The length of surveys was also carefully examined, as some data collection points contained more than 50 questions, creating participant fatigue and reducing the quality of responses.

Following this review, the work progressed through several steps:

• Streamlining the indicator set by removing questions and measures that did not add clear value or were redundant
  
  
• Redesigning the indicator framework to define each indicator in detail, specify related questions, answer types, and options, and map them to Groundbreakers’ most relevant outcome areas
  
  
• Strategically placing indicators at key stages of the programme to support longitudinal measurement and clearly show the organisation’s contribution to change
  
  

A specific focus was placed on capturing the programme’s effect on self-efficacy and related dimensions of agency. This included:

• Creating a combined scale that measures self-efficacy, capacity to act, economic empowerment, and gender equality
  
  
• Integrating this scale into endline and follow-up surveys to assess changes in participants’ self-perception
  
  
• Complementing quantitative results with qualitative “stories of change” to give a richer understanding of the outcomes
  
  

Additional enhancements to the framework and surveys were also made:

• Setting benchmarks and thresholds based on recognised international standards, such as the international poverty line, to make results more comparable and credible
  
  
• Applying principles from empirical social research to improve survey design, ensuring questions were unbiased, clearly worded, and free of double meanings, while also encouraging better response behaviour
  
  

By the end of the collaboration, Groundbreaker had a more focused and clearly structured indicator framework alongside a shorter, well-designed survey format, enabling them to collect high-quality, representative data and communicate their impact more effectively.
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"Data driven decisions are key for Groundbreaker, so making sure that our data collection strategy and tools were relevant and valid was a priority. Now we can successfully say we have considerably improved the quality of our M&E strategy thanks to the expertise and support from leonardo. academy. This partnership journey was not only rich in knowledge but also very enjoyable thanks to their amazing team!"

- Renata Díaz, Project Manager and M&E Lead

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The Way Forward

Groundbreaker plans to implement the refined indicator framework and the improved survey design immediately, using them for the next round of data collection with their upcoming cohort. The goal is to capture more focused, reliable, and representative data from the outset, enabling the organisation to communicate its outcomes with even greater clarity to stakeholders, funders, and the public. The new approach will also strengthen longitudinal tracking, providing richer insights into the transformative impact the programme has on its participants over time.

We would like to sincerely thank Groundbreaker for their trust throughout this process, with special appreciation to Leoni Rossberg and Renata Díaz for the outstanding collaboration that made this work possible.

"Groundbreaker already had an impressive standard in their IMM processes when we began working together, and it has been a privilege to help lift this to the next level by refining their indicator framework and survey design. We are convinced that these enhancements will support their mission to advance social justice and gender equality in Uganda. Collaborating with such a dedicated team has been both inspiring and rewarding.”

- Manuel Müller, Impact Measurement Consultant at leonardo. impact

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