Date: Saturday, April 4, 2026
Youth Focused Evaluation Topical Interest Group is for Evaluation About Youth, for Youth, and with Youth. The Youth Focused Evaluation TIG aims to collaboratively create learning spaces for all evaluators and researchers (adult and youth) that focus on the practices and outcomes of positive youth development and participatory approaches across informal and formal contexts. The YFE-TIG speaks to youth and adult evaluators’ and researchers’ unique needs by promoting the development and use of responsive tools and methods leading to practical and transformative outcomes for young people. The YFE-TIG helps youth and adult evaluators and researchers develop effective practices in professional development, program quality, measurement, ethics, youth participation, and amplifying youth voice and power. Ultimately, we want to support more profound youth-informed or youth-led evaluation and decision-making.
Hello! We, Tabitha Sarkar, a young woman co-researcher and international business student in Amsterdam, and Selina Keya, a young professional evaluation associate with Elevating Voices with Change and The Mangrove Collective, worked with young women co-researchers in Bangladesh as part of the RiseUp! Asia Pacific Formative Evaluation. RiseUp! is a flagship initiative of World YWCA, in partnership with the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, designed to strengthen young women’s leadership and advocacy across Asia and the Pacific.
Keya, as an evaluation navigator, partnered with YWCA Bangladesh to design and guide the evaluation, engaging RiseUp! alumni, like Tabitha, as young women co-researchers. Keya trained and coached the co-researchers to lead data collection, co-analysis, and facilitate a sensemaking workshop.
Transformational leadership enables young women to reshape power structures. In Bangladesh, RiseUp! has built confidence, Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights knowledge, and peer solidarity. Yet barriers persist: patriarchal norms, in-law resistance, ethnic discrimination, and weak enforcement. Addressing these requires deeper engagement with resistant groups, succession planning, and sustained alumni networks. RiseUp! gives young women ownership, not just a platform.
Safe spaces were central to this process. More than physical venues, they became relational incubators of trust, solidarity, and collective action. Young women described them as places where they could “grow together,” practice leadership, and support one another. Within these spaces, participants confronted taboos around menstrual health, spoke publicly, and advocated for survivors of violence. Vulnerability and courage intertwined, allowing them to share deeply personal struggles and draw strength from one another.
Storytelling served as both evidence and advocacy. Using a Change Scale tool and Most Significant Change storytelling, participants captured impact beyond surveys, revealing how entrenched gender norms shape their lives while highlighting resilience and leadership capacity. Most Significant Change narratives showed how young women prevented child marriages, referred survivors to legal services, and engaged duty bearers. One participant noted, “Family is the first and primary support; if they do not support, we cannot move forward.” Capturing family attitude shifts alongside community change proved vital. Amplifying youth voices strengthened policy influence and accountability with leaders, teachers, and NGOs. Storytelling fostered self-reflection and collective awareness, showing struggles are not inevitable. Youth-led evaluation must link grassroots narratives to policy and intergenerational dialogue.
Through collective sharing, awareness deepened. Women began to see how family structures and social norms had shaped their experiences, while also recognizing their own capacity for growth, resistance, and change. This realization became the first step toward empowerment, planting visions of dignity, freedom, and belonging. Together, they imagined futures where their voices matter, rights are recognized, and possibilities replace limitations.
RiseUp! participants also co-created bilingual posters, infographics, and handouts, ensuring findings were accessible to grassroots communities and institutional stakeholders. As a core component of the Feminist Consultation Methodology, it is one way to make sure the findings are owned by communities.
This process was grounded in World YWCA’s Feminist Consultation Methodology ensuring ownership by young women, keeping data rooted in communities and empowering them as leaders of change rather than subjects of external evaluation with key stakeholders.
Youth-led evaluation must continue to evolve as a tool for systemic change. As one NGO field officer observed, “Now young women have learnt how to knit dreams.” RiseUp! shows that youth-led evaluation, grounded in storytelling, is not only a method of documenting change but a pathway to systemic transformation. Learn more about the RiseUp! evaluation here.
The American Evaluation Association is hosting YFE TIG Week with our colleagues in the Youth Focused Evaluation Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our YFE TIG members. 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.