Date: Monday, August 11, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Hello, I’m Stephanie Mui. I’m an internal evaluator at Good Shepherd Services in New York City, where I work to center youth voice in evaluation and program design. I also teach Research and Evaluation in the Field of Youth Development at CUNY School of Professional Studies and serve as an Evaluation Consultant for Working the Gap.
In evaluation, we often talk about engaging youth. But too often, engagement stops at participation—filling out a survey, joining a focus group, or sitting on an advisory board with limited decision-making power. What would it look like to move beyond participation and build real partnerships with young people?
In my work as an internal evaluator in youth development settings, I’ve seen the difference when we make space for youth to shape the evaluation process, not just respond to it. Youth bring insight, creativity, and a deep understanding of what matters in their programs and communities. When we involve them meaningfully, our evaluations become more responsive, more relevant, and more rooted in lived experience.
Shifting from youth participation to partnership means moving from collecting input to sharing power. It means youth are not only informing evaluation but co-creating it. They are helping to define what success looks like, shaping the questions we ask, interpreting what the data tells us, and deciding what to do next.
That shift doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intention, flexibility, and a willingness to confront some real barriers.
Over time, I’ve noticed a few barriers that come up repeatedly in this work:
What helps?
Centering youth voice in evaluation isn’t just an equity strategy—it makes our work better. Evaluations that reflect youth perspectives tend to surface more relevant insights and more actionable findings. And when young people are part of the process, they’re more likely to see the value of the work, and to use it.
Most importantly, youth-led and youth-informed evaluation models align with a vision of shared leadership that extends beyond the evaluation field. They reflect a commitment to practicing what we preach: that those most impacted should have a voice and a seat at the table when decisions are made.
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