So what’s happened? How do you find out what’s changed? How do you evaluate the difference you have made? The tools in this unit will help you. One young person who helped test out this unit summed up what evaluation was all about: ‘Evaluation helps us find out what is good about something and what is not so good. This helps us to make things better.’ And we all evaluate most of the time; we just don’t think of it in that way. ‘That was nice.’ ‘Don’t go, there, they are really horrible.’ ‘I’d buy that one if I were you.’ These are all evaluations – of a sort. But sometimes, your evaluation needs to go a bit deeper than just friendly advice based on your own experience. This unit helps you understand more about what evaluation is, its importance and how to do it well so as to add weight behind your campaigns to make change happen and celebrate success. Through this unit you are building up your own evaluation toolkit. Keep safe the materials you produce so you can use them again and again.

• Understanding about evaluation
• Tooling up for evaluation
• Doing the evaluation

YouthBank is an exciting and innovative UK-wide movement, based on local projects run by young people managing funds and giving out grants to other young people for projects and activities they want to develop and run in their communities. A number of YouthBank young people decided they needed to know more about the difference they were making. They volunteered to become evaluators. They went on three residential weekends and explored what evaluation was and why it was important – and had a good time as well. They gained confidence and skills and devised their own tools for evaluating local YouthBanks. Equipped young people now evaluate the work and impact of other YouthBanks, helping consolidate learning and good practice in supporting local groups. And this in turn helps local YouthBanks get more grants to give out to more young people’s groups and make a bigger difference in their communities.

Below are the three aims of the unit. Use activity sheet 33 to rate your current knowledge. Give yourself a personal score on the scale 1-2-3-4-5. 1 is low and 5 is high. What proof do you have? Refer to the list in the Introduction for examples of what might be good sources of evidence. This is particularly important if you are using this unit to gain credits towards an award. What score would you give yourselves as a group?

Download the Unit 5 - What Do We Know worksheet

5.1 Understanding about evaluation

• 5.1(a) Four Faces: What Do We Mean By Evaluation?
• 5.1(b) Chicken Nuggets: Thinking About Evaluation And Evidence
• 5.1(c) Our Evaluation Charter

5.2 Tooling up for evaluation

• 5.2(a) What Works For Us?
• 5.2(b) Our Perfect Evaluator
• 5.2(c) Give It A Go

5.3 Doing the evaluation

• 5.3(a) Our Evaluation Plan
• 5.3(b) Our Evaluation
• 5.3(c) What Have We Got To Shout About?

Unit Review