Slices of Care: Assessing the Impact of Baking and Entrepreneurship Training for Low-Income Women Through Kirkpatrick’s Model

Abstract

This project was intended to examine the efficacy of a training programme that sought to empower financially struggling women by equipping them with the basic skills of baking and providing them the experience of running a sales event where they sold their own products. The community project known as ‘Slices of Care’ was conducted by the Bakery and Pastry Programme of Keningau Vocational College where the participants comprising women from pink-collar occupation, single mothers and housewives attended a series of workshop on baking cakes and pastries which was followed by a bake sale dedicated to them selling these products via a pop-up stall. The project was aligned with the four levels of Kirkpatrick’s Model which was developed to evaluate training. Hence, the progress of the project was assessed through the four levels (reaction, learning, behavior and results) via rating scales, evaluation rubric, checklist and sales log. The findings suggested that this project had a viable method in providing a comprehensive training for target participants that could help them achieve the intended goals. The constructive feedback from the respondents called for more similar workshop classes to be conducted for more participants who can benefit from this project. Hence, Kirkpatrick’s Model is an ideal framework that can be adopted to design and assess a training programme to ensure impactful outcomes.