Youth participants evaluating and conducting research on the Baobab Platform

• In Event: Engaging Youth and Program Participants as Partners in Evaluation Research: Approaches and Insights from two International Scholarship Programs

Proposal

This presentation will review the process that Neil Butcher and Associates (NBA), a South African research firm which focuses on educational practice and policy-making, has followed to carry out an evaluation of the Baobab platform. The Baobab Platform, led by Arizona State University, is “a social, professional, learning community for young African leaders, participants and Alumni of Mastercard Foundation programs.” Started in 2016, the Baobab platform has grown to over 50,000 members and focuses on four goals: sharing opportunities, professional development, mentorship, and networking and collaboration (Baobab, n.d).

In 2021 NBA was contracted to carry out the five-year evaluation of Baobab. The original goals of the evaluation focused on understanding how and why Mastercard Scholars and Alumni engage with the Baobab platform, African youth’s perceptions of social networks, and how African youth leverage social networks to achieve their goals.

In year 4 of the evaluation – and through partnership with Arizona State University’s Baobab team – the evaluation turned to soliciting research proposals from users of the platform. The focus was on providing opportunities for youth-led research which aligned with the overarching research objectives of the evaluation. The purpose of adopting this approach was to create space for Baobab user-voices to be central and to provide research capacity-building experiences for Alumni interested in research careers. In addition, the project provided an opportunity for learning about youth-led evaluation in practice.

Over the past year, five research teams have carried out small-scale research and evaluation projects examining how the platform is used, where users find benefits and challenges, and suggested improvements. The teams included 15 young researchers across six countries (Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Somalia, Benin, and Rwanda), with international coaches from South Africa, Rwanda, and the United States.

This presentation will highlight key components from designing the young-researcher-led process, the role of coaches to support each team, working with young-researcher projects and institutional review boards, and several informative examples of the benefits and challenges of working with participants to design and conduct their own projects. In addition, the key learnings regarding the engagement of program alumni in evaluation research and suggestions for improvement from the NBA team will be included.

Authors

• Angela Ochse, Neil Butcher & Associates

• Olive Uwimana, Neil Butcher & Associates