I’m Natalie De Sole (she/her), a white, multicultural, independent consultant and founder of the evaluation firm Rooted-Growth. Elevating youth voice requires me to walk the tightrope of values and relationships. My outsider status often goes beyond that of a third-party party evaluator; my race, ethnicity, gender, culture, lived experiences, education, and community usually differ from that of my clients. I found opportunities to engage youth only opened up after I established trust.
Over the 15 years of my evaluation work, I learned to bring relationships to the forefront of value-driven work by learning together with my clients. We co-create evaluation designs and use feedback loops throughout the evaluation process. I learned that a softer approach opened up more opportunities to engage youth after writing the proposal rather than decreasing them.
Lesson Learned
The key mechanism for increasing youth participation was often centering learning through mid-point data parties and final learning sessions. These learning opportunities allowed the evaluation advisory groups to pause and reflect on the value of engaging youth within the evaluation design. If a client saw youth engagement as unfeasible, I trusted their judgment and respected their boundaries.
Rad Resource
Lansdown’s youth participation model guides my mental model for participation and includes no participation, consultation, collaboration, and youth-led. While falling short of a youth-led evaluation, the table below shows three ways I incorporated youth and community voice within the contextual realities and limitations of the evaluation.
| Youth Consulted | — | Youth Collaborated | |
| Evaluation 1 | Evaluation 2 | Evaluation 3 | |
| Client-Consultant Partnership Strength | Strong | Newer to Medium | Medium |
| Stakes | Very low | Medium | High |
| Youth Engagement | Youth reviewed survey data to prioritize and contextualize the findings in focus groups. | Youth focus group data was triangulated with third-party data from a local nonprofit where youth prioritized issues and solutions in their community. Youth focus group member-checked the findings. | At youth-led meetings, some youth became notetakers, prioritized findings, and the larger group of youth facilitators member-checked the findings. |
| Culture/Community Engagement | Staff and alumni evaluation advisory boards | Funder evaluation advisory board interviewed grantees member-checked the findings | District-level community members validated the findings |
| Racial make-up | Client: Black Youth: Black | Client: Latina and Black Youth: Multiracial | Client: Black Youth: Multiracial |
| Time | Fast-paced; 7 months | Normal paced; 7 months | Normal pace; 3 years |
| Scope | Initially small, and grew to a medium-sized contract: This required a renegotiation of the scope, which included switching from a second survey to using the focus groups. The scope and price were renegotiated. | Medium-sized contract: The scope grew slightly to include the third-party youth workshop data (though minimal in quantity) from the nonprofit and member-checking data that went beyond the original plan. The price was not renegotiated, but I decided the added cost was minimal and the value added large. | Large contract: Youth engagement grew over the three years; however, the project remained within the allocated budget as other originally anticipated activities were unfeasible during the height of COVID-19. |
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.