Five ways to meaningfully engage young people in evaluation and learning

The United Nations estimates that the world’s growing youth population will touch almost 1.3 billion by 2030, with a large proportion residing in low- and middle-income countries.

This calls for greater investment and engagement with young people to reflect on development interventions from their perspective and work towards outcomes that reflect the real needs and priorities of young people and their communities.

As a global agency that supports the collective power of young leaders to create a better world, Restless Development recognises the importance of meaningfully engaging young people during each stage of a development intervention, from programme design to evaluation and learning. Evaluation and learning are important processes for telling stories on the effectiveness and impact of a development intervention, but they are not power-neutral. Rarely do young people and communities get to tell their own stories of change.

Enabling young people to evaluate the impact of development initiatives

Meaningful youth engagement in evaluation and learning offers an opportunity to reflect on development interventions from young people’s perspective, and ensures these interventions are responsive to their needs. It enables us to become more accountable to young people, youth-led organisations and communities. And it provides a way to proactively shift power to young people and communities and ensure that they have ‘the’ say when it comes to telling stories about their lives and the impact of the development initiatives they have been a part of.

The process of meaningfully engaging young people in evaluation and learning can take multiple forms depending on the level of investment – in terms of time, commitment, willingness and resources – that the organisation has at its disposal. It requires careful reflection, a strong commitment and willingness to share power with young people and a nuanced approach to looking at ‘who is the expert’ and ‘who produces the knowledge’.

Five tips for involving young people in evaluation and learning

Below are some practical tools and techniques borne out of Restless Development’s experience of engaging young people in evaluation and learning processes which can help guide your work in this area.

1. Be clear about the purpose, or why you want to involve young people in the process, and what resources and skills you have to do this

This will help establish trust and clear channels of communication. Be open about the value that you see young people bringing to the process, and be honest if you cannot involve them in certain aspects.

2. Invest time to develop a shared understanding of the values and principles that will underpin young people’s engagement in the evaluation and learning process

Make sure that key aspects are arrived at through joint decision making. Young people should have a say in defining the change they want to see, the kind of evidence that needs to be produced to understand impact and effectiveness and what questions to ask. They should also be able to make insights and recommendations based on the data generated and facilitate its use for change in communities.

3. Be intentional about youth engagement in evaluation and learning

Invest in creating a dedicated platform such as a Youth Advisory Group or a Youth Steering Group which can serve as a safe space for young people to be equal partners in decision making. It can be a space for facilitating the exchange of ideas, a sounding board for all processes, including evaluations, and act as an accountability mechanism to ensure that your organisation is responsive to young people’s needs. The members of this group should be diverse and reflect the population being supported by the development initiative.

4. Effectively budget for meaningful youth engagement in evaluation and learning

It cannot be an afterthought as this puts the process at risk of being extractive or tokenistic. The evaluation and learning budget should be agreed upon with the funder at the outset and must account for all the processes where young people are involved so that there is a clear commitment as well as greater ownership and sustainability. You will need to factor in the time and resources required to mentor young people to become part of evaluation and learning processes as well as adequate compensation. This will help build trust and show that you value young people’s contribution.

5. Start somewhere – do not wait to tick all the boxes in an evaluation process

You do not have to involve young people in everything all at once. Look for opportunities where young people’s perspectives will strengthen your understanding. Let young people lead monitoring activities, and let them create recommendations and calls for action based on evaluation data. Use these to continually push the needle internally and externally to eventually reach a place where young people can co-lead evaluations and own their own stories of change.