Date: Friday, April 3, 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.
Greetings! We are Elaine Stavnitzky, Founder and Chief Navigator of Elevating Voices for Change and Kimberley Teillet-Meunier of the Mangrove Collective.
Over the past year, World YWCA commissioned us to lead the RiseUp! Asia Pacific Formative Evaluation. Together with Dr. Suchi Gaur and Victoria Kahla, Senior Director of Strategy and Operations and Program Manager for RiseUp! respectively, we co-designed the evaluation process with an intergenerational Steering Committee of RiseUp! Asia Pacific leaders and representation from Australian government. RiseUp! Young Women’s Leadership and Advocacy Initiative in Asia and the Pacific is a flagship initiative of World YWCA, in partnership with the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gender equality initiatives.
RiseUp! in Asia and the Pacific is led by YWCA national associations and partners, with young women in Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, contributing to World YWCA’s Goal 2035: 100 million young women and girls will transform power structures to create justice, gender equality and a world without violence and war. We were intentional that this collaborative, formative evaluation be grounded in World YWCA’s Feminist Consultation Methodology, ensuring that data collection and sense-making are owned by young women who have participated in RiseUp!
We set up a structure where young women co-researchers were facilitated, guided and supported by Evaluation Navigators (young professional evaluators) in almost all the countries (except Sri Lanka where we followed a different approach). RiseUp! partners worked with Evaluation Navigators and RiseUp! young women co-researchers to support data collection and sense-making in their RiseUp! communities. This deeply collaborative evaluation is the result of our unwavering commitment to the values and practices of community-led accountability.
From our experience, values-based principles are key to a feminist approach to evaluation. The following are ones we applied in the evaluation.
Locally Led & Trust-Based: The Feminist Consultation Methodology prioritizes evaluations that are shaped and guided by those most affected by the issues under study. Participants are engaged as knowledge-holders and co-interpreters, fostering trust through shared decision-making, respect for lived experience, and attention to relational ethics.
Intersectional & Inclusive: The methodology explicitly recognizes that power, opportunity, and harm are shaped by intersecting identities and contexts. For evaluators, this means designing processes that surface diverse perspectives and avoid treating communities as homogeneous.
Transparent Processes: Clarity in purpose, roles, methods, and use of findings is central. Transparent communication—before, during, and after data collection—supports informed participation and reduces extractive practices.
Accountable & Reflective: Ongoing feedback, collective sense-making, and reflection are built into the process. Accountability is understood not only as reporting results, but as being answerable to participants and adapting based on what is learned.
Together, these principles challenge evaluators to align methods with values, placing equity, agency, and responsibility at the center of evaluation practice, as articulated in the work of World YWCA.
World YWCA’s Feminist Consultation Methodology – an adaptive guide that walks people through a participatory approach to evaluation and research that centers young people’s lived experiences, shares power in decision-making, and builds trust through inclusive, transparent, and accountable engagement.
YWCA’s Safe Space Guidance – creating safe spaces is critical for young women to share and learn, especially about sensitive topics that are important to them, such as their hygiene and health, violence, discrimination and other challenges they may face in their community to be a young woman leader.
For other supporting resources, check out World YWCA’s resource page.
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.