The Gift That Keeps On Giving
The cost of youth not graduating high school is well documented, and includes poorer health outcomes, an increased likelihood of unemployment, lower wage earnings, poverty, and higher social costs.
We partnered with PwC to conduct an extensive study measuring these issues and evaluating the long-term positive impact of Take a Hike, to identify the social return of investment in the Take a Hike program.
The study, completed by PwC with support from the Ministry of Education’s Analytics Branch, estimates the social return of investment (SROI) generated by Take a Hike by comparing the financial costs of the program to the monetary value of the impacts it creates. PwC estimate:
The impacts studied
![info-results[1].png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f25104730a6a01e8684f4ba/1602125731827-V4PTK609BHO3MXT5T7D4/info-results%5B1%5D.png)
It wasn’t possible to quantify and value all the potential impacts that Take a Hike creates. PwC acknowledges that if more impacts had been included in the study, the SROI value would likely have been even higher.
PwC found that the largest impact of Take a Hike is in helping youth to graduate with their Dogwood Diploma, meaning they will likely have increased future earnings over their lifetime. However, in the upper bound estimate, even without including education uplift impacts, the total impact per youth of the mental and physical health improvements alone is $29,900, giving an SROI of 1: 2.0.
This suggests that, beyond supporting educational outcomes:
Take a Hike is delivering significant value to society through the focus on mental well-being and physical activity.