Main Features - June 2008
World Bank Meeting: Measuring
the
Impact of Youth Voluntary Service
Programs
By
Charmagne
Campbell-Patton, ICP Program
Associate
Contributing Author:
Minna Mattero, World Bank, Child and Youth
Development
Consultant
Innovations
in Civic Participation and the
World Bank recently partnered to host an
international experts meeting on
measuring the impact of youth voluntary
service programs. The meeting, held on
May 8-9, 2008 at the World Bank headquarters
in Washington, DC, brought
together over 50 researchers, policymakers,
and practitioners from the fields
of civic engagement, youth development, and
impact evaluation to examine
existing evidence on the impact of voluntary
service on the program participants,
explore different evaluation methods and
challenges, identify gaps in the
research, and develop a research agenda to
address these gaps.
This meeting came about through
the work that ICP has been doing to promote
youth service as a strategy for global youth
and community development. Through
various initiatives and forums, ICP and other
partner organizations have been
working to develop an expanding research base
and global network of
policymakers, practitioners, and researchers
involved in youth service. As part
of this effort, ICP and the World Bank's
Children and Youth Unit have developed
a working relationship around the topic,
including co-authoring a World Bank
Youth Development Note on Youth
Service: A Strategy for Youth
and National Development.
The
World Bank's World Development Report
(WDR) 2007: Development and the
Next
Generation, included youth civic service
as an example of a "promising but
unproven" intervention for positive youth
development. This was the first WDR
to focus entirely on young people and has
become a benchmark for interest on
youth issues, including youth service, within
the development field. While
authors of the report found some evidence of
the positive effects of youth
service on youth and community development,
interdisciplinary quantitative and
qualitative evaluations of youth service
programs that consider multiple
impacts and stakeholders and are comparable
across varying program contexts are
very limited, particularly in developing
countries, which lack of funding and
research capacity. Since the publication of
the WDR, ICP and the World Bank's
Children and Youth unit have continued to work
together to more closely examine
the evidence base for the impact of youth
service programs in order to
determine whether there is sufficient evidence
for the World Bank to support investments
in these types of programs in the context of
developing countries.
The
May meeting was designed to bring together key
experts in the field to look
more closely at the evidence base as well as
challenges facing the field in
building this evidence base. The meeting was
very successful and initiated an
important dialogue among a diverse group of
stakeholders about specific areas
in which the field of youth service should
focus in order to grow and
strengthen. There
was rich dialogue
among participants about standards of evidence
and appropriate methods for
evaluating youth service programs. It became
evident during the event that many
youth service programs are not at a stage
where a quantitative impact
evaluation using control groups is appropriate
or feasible.
At
the conclusion of the meeting, it was clear
that there is significant demand
for more research in this field. At the
moment, the theoretical
framework behind youth service needs to be
better
articulated. Furthermore, given
the diversity of programs in the area, the
participants
recognized the need to develop a common
understanding of the terminology surrounding
youth service and develop a typology of youth
service programs to create a clearer
picture of what program options are available.
Participants
also agreed that more work needs to be done on
identifying the
expected
outcomes and indicators for programs and
determining the program models that seem
to be most effective in meeting certain
objectives. Developing guidelines about
the context and development stage in which a
program would benefit from an
impact evaluation was also considered
useful.
To
accomplish this task, participants agreed to
create a community of practice
that could set research norms and principles
for high quality youth service
programs. To better define the relationship
between the community of practice
and the World Bank, the conference organizers
asked the participants to reflect
on what could be the World Bank's role vis a
vis the community of practice. ICP
will be putting a working group together in
the next few weeks to begin the
process of defining a strategy for the
community of practice, including
suggestions for the Bank's
role.
A full report based on the proceedings of the meeting will be compiled and made available on the ICP and World Bank websites shortly. For more information about the meeting proceedings, including a complete agenda, speaker biographies, and presentations, please visit http://www.icicp.org/ht/d/sp/i/2628/pid/2628.