Building youth agency and organizational capacity through program assessment.

• In Event: Buidling Youth Agency through Participatory MEL Methods in LAC

Proposal

There is a considerable gap in youth programming for tools or rubrics that can gauge how aligned the capacity and design of programs and initiatives, by and for youth, are to the science of learning and evidence-based frameworks in these fields. As per our literature review, a considerable number of tools do assess organizational capacity and program design, though separately; however, none specifically align standards nor criteria to a Positive Youth Development framework. The Youth Programming Assessment tool (YPAT), developed by FHI 360, attempts to support this gap. The tool can also be used for internal or external assessment purposes.

In preparation for the implementation of the USAID/Youth Led Activity in the Dominican Republic, the AIR MEL team assessed ten youth-serving organizations' pre-existing programming abilities against the youth positive development framework. All of the organizations had been previously vetted for their experience working in some capacity with the youth in targetted communities; however, 1/3 did not have specific youth programming. Instead, youth were part of the beneficiaries included in their design, and seven out of ten YSOs needed to familiarize themselves with the concept of Youth Positive Development and Do No Harm principles.

The application process, as it's designed, follows two phases; the first only involves youth participants, while the second incorporates the morning participants into a session with staff members from the program and organization. Through the application of the tool, the team noted a few constraints with its design. For example, the tool was not friendly to programs with growing levels of involvement, nor for organizations that were simply contracted to implement programs. Also, the tool's youth rubric only sometimes matches the rubric's standards for the staff. That is to say that only sometimes the questions for youth match the description for standards as the questions are based on a frequency and importance metric.

While the findings from the self-applied, externally facilitated YPAT sessions resulted in a predominantly positive overall score for all the organizations, a few limitations were identified in discussions with each team. These limitations included shared definitions for soft/life skills, youth participation levels, and documented materials and policies for systematic knowledge transfers. There were also several instances where the youth were not actively engaged via the staff members to participate and had to be probed.

Nonetheless, a vital outcome of this experience was how the youth appreciated having a voice at the table influencing the evaluation of the programming. Another outcome was related to youth building their awareness of evidence-based and right-based programming. Many youths requested to take home the rubrics and the materials used for their continued education and advocacy in the programming they are involved with.

This panel seeks to elaborate on the experience of applying the tool, involving youth, and utilizing the findings to improve the capacity of the YSOs in their co-creation sessions for the community-level program designs.

Author

• Ana K Gonzalez, American Institutes for Research