International Youth Inclusion Standards to Consider in Evaluation Practice
Youth inclusion in evaluation values young people as co-creators of knowledge. International standards such as the Youth Friendly Standards and EVAL4Action provide tools for organizations to review and assess their existing practices and support improvements.
By: Kathleen Baker, Partner, CogniProbe Solutions Inc.
This past June, the global evaluation initiative (GEI) held their annual knowledge sharing event, gLocal Evaluation Week. GEI is a global network of organizations that come together to discuss monitoring and evaluation learning and support evidence-based decision making for evaluation practice. One gLocal fireside chat hosted by the American Evaluation Association’s Youth-Focused Eval Topical Interest Group, “Institutionalizing Youth-Centric Practices & Standards”, highlighted two international standards for youth inclusion. The session reflected upon the hosts experience in applying youth standards, and the benefits of engaging youth in evaluative practice.
The first standard, Youth Friendly Standards (YFS), released in 2023, aligns with the United Nations Sustainability Goals (UNSG) and takes a systems based approach to support social transformation and engagement of youth throughout an organization. YFS was developed by the Consortium Jeunesse Sénégal and WeBridge Africa, with the support of UNICEF and Generation Unlimited. The standards are organized across six thematic domains: governance, institutional partnerships, community development, programs/products/services, human resources, and business relationships.
The second standard, EVAL4Action campaign, also released in 2023 and aligned with the UNSG, provides support for organizations to advance meaningful youth engagement in evaluation. The standards are organized in a structure for organizations to critically self-reflect on their organization and offer prompting questions to embed this practice. The EVAL4Action campaign developed unique standards for six stakeholder groups: academia, governments, international organizations, the private sector, Voluntary Organizations for Professional Evaluation/EvalYouth chapters, and youth organizations. Within each set of standards, EVAL4Action has defined six assessment categories, with each having a spectrum of requirement thresholds.
Taking a closer look at the standards for international organizations to meaningfully engage youth in evaluation, one category to explore is “practice”. This category outlines guidance and requirements to reflect on how an organization’s evaluation guidelines and tools include youth participation in all evaluation phases, focusing on the diversity of youth. For example, Practice Requirement 2.1 provides a threshold for the inclusion of youth voices in an evaluation, ranging from a minimum requirement of “Youth voices are heard during all phases of the evaluation”, to an exceeding minimum requirement of, “Young people are provided space and structures to take responsibility in all phases of the evaluation and participate in co-decision-making with seniors.” At the end of each standard, EVAL4Action provides a scoring rubric to provide a summary of the organization’s score for youth engagement in evaluation practice. The final score and learnings acquired through the reflective exercise, can be used to support decision-making, and improvement plans for the organization going forward.
As evaluators, there is an opportunity to learn from international standards such as YFS and EVAL4Action when creating evaluation plans and data collection methods. These frameworks can provide tools for organizations to assess existing practice, build and improve internal systems, and support meaningful engagement of youth in all phases of an evaluation.