CYFAR Professional Development Event 2025

Program evaluation is not only an opportunity to facilitate program improvement but can also be a key opportunity to empower participants. Engaging program evaluation can further facilitate participants' transition from passive subjects to active agents within programs. This interactive conference session will address the benefits of participatory evaluation approaches and demonstrate how to use “Evaluation Skill-a-Thons" as a complement to CYFAR Common Measures to actively engage participants at every evaluation process step. With the Evaluation Skill-a-Thon model, participants actively participate in each step of conducted the evaluation of their program - contributing, analyzing, and interpreting the data; proposing program changes from their findings; and designing subsequent evaluations. While the approach was initially developed to engage youth in evaluation, it can be valuable for participants of any age. Session attendees will leave with a series of interactive approaches to evaluation that they can implement in their own programs.