By Alok Srivastava
Director, CMS Social
India is estimated to have a population of around 1.4 billion, as per the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) State of World Population 2024 report, constituting about one-sixth of the world’s population. Around two-thirds of India is below 35 years of age.[1] Relying on this demographic dividend, India can ensure a decisive role for the young minds in eliminating poverty and ensuring that no one is left behind in India’s journey from a developing to a developed economy.
Evaluation has a key role in assessing progress for development. Evaluation eco-system in the country must therefore aim to ensure active engagement of youth in different phases of an evaluation. Commissioners of evaluation, donors and consultancy organizations as major drivers of evaluation have an important responsibility towards ensuring youth-driven evaluation. Youth can play diverse roles in the evaluation process- one, as a respondent or participant in the evaluation exercise, contribute by sharing information and their opinion about interventions, and two, as a young emerging evaluator, use their technical skill and knowledge in evaluating the outputs and outcomes of interventions. In fact, the participation of youth becomes even more critical during the dissemination and review of the evaluation findings at the stakeholders’ levels, as it shapes the intervention strategy for the future.
However, currently, the participation of youth is not encouraging. The ‘missing youth’ in most evaluations is primarily due to a collective failure of the consultancy organisations and to a large extent of commissioners and donors of the evaluation.
In the Indian context, some key contributing factors to this concern. Academic institutions mostly do not offer exclusive courses on evaluation, particularly at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. This leaves the professional organizations in the evaluation sector with a dearth of young professionals willing to be part of this sector and build their careers. Due to a lack of a comprehensive academic course on evaluation, the evaluative knowledge and skills among young professionals are limited. As a result, it mainly falls on the organizations hiring these young professionals to familiarize them even with the basics of evaluation.
Terms of references (ToRs)/Request for proposals (RfPs), do not insist or give weightage to proposals having a core team with young and emerging evaluators in key roles. A very critical aspect but currently not in practice. In fact, ToRs and RfPs often prioritize technical proposals from teams with extensive experience across various sectors. However, these documents rarely encourage or require the inclusion of academically qualified young professionals with limited practical experience in evaluation.
The participation of youth on both sides of the table, as an evaluator and as a contributor to the evaluation findings, is limited at present. Inclusion of youth as an important stakeholder at both the levels will ensure ownership of the evaluation results and better outcomes of the development interventions.
Encouraging youth to be part of each evaluation assignment or at least in most of the evaluations will have three-fold benefits. One, encourages youth to take up evaluation as a profession; two, consultancy organizations will have a second line of evaluators readily available; and three, young professionals will provide a fresh perspective to the evaluation approach and findings.
Youth are often not considered as a key stakeholder while formulating, operationalizing or disseminating evaluation results. Views and opinions of experts matter more. The participation of youth on both sides of the table, as an evaluator and as a contributor to the evaluation findings, is limited at present. Inclusion of youth as an important stakeholder at both the levels will ensure ownership of the evaluation results and better outcomes of the development interventions.
The Centre for Media Studies (CMS) is an independent, non-profit social research and evaluation think tank, since 1991. It is dedicated to multi-disciplinary research-driven initiatives that enable policymakers to take informed decisions on development and social change to improve quality of life. CMS is one of the few organizations in India to have an accredited Institutional Review Board (IRB) on ethics to review evaluation protocols for promoting ethical norms in evaluations undertaken by CMS as well as other organizations. To add to its credentials, CMS was recognized as a Super Champion for upholding the Youth in Evaluation standards, during Youth in Evaluation week 2024.
CMS, since its initial years, has encouraged the participation of young professionals in evaluation. Young and emerging evaluators are like a free-flowing stream, which needs to be cuddled, guided and regulated to strive for high standards of evaluation practices.
As a standard operating protocol, evaluation assignments undertaken by CMS have always been guided by the following four cornerstones:
A mixed team of experienced and emerging evaluation professionals.
Delegation of responsibilities to emerging evaluators.
Ensuring capacity building and handholding of young professionals at different phases of the assignments.
Opportunities for young evaluators in the core team to interact with clients and partners.
CMS not only welcomes young graduates from universities to participate in primary data collection but also ensures that the core evaluation team comprises a mix of experienced and emerging evaluators. Along with youth, the focus is always on encouraging female evaluators in the team. Particularly during interaction with the community members and keeping the cultural context in mind, gender matching to the extent possible, among evaluators and participants from the community, is encouraged.
A young evaluator leads a session with the core group of evaluators during an evaluation assignment
With the vision and belief that “research is not an end in itself but a means and an objective way of leading to advocacy, empowering and achieving social equity”, CMS encourages and empowers young evaluators cutting across gender and regional diversity in India. Aligning with the vision of CMS that research can enable change through informed decision-making about the programmes, policies and practices, we at CMS, engage young evaluators as active partners in the evaluation process. Evaluators from different regions of the country bring local knowledge and values, which are vital for sustainable change.
Making young evaluators a part of the decision-making starts with putting them in responsible roles in different phases of the evaluation, be it literature review, development of parameters and indicators, evaluation instruments, analysis plan and reporting. At CMS, the young evaluators get exposure to different phases of evaluation in multidisciplinary thematic areas and this broadens the horizon of analytical thinking. To CMS' advantage, young evaluators bring with them a new and fresh outlook. For the young professionals, access and exposure to various development issues have multiplied with the emergence of social media tools. Ease of access to these social media discussions and even participation sharpens their professional expertise. Organizations engaging the youth will definitely benefit from it!
Making young evaluators a part of the decision-making starts with putting them in responsible roles in different phases of the evaluation.
At the same time, constant encouragement for learning and providing sufficient time and space beyond their engagement in ongoing evaluation assignments is desirable. Short-term courses, attending workshops and seminars are some regular features, which is encouraged among young evaluators. This helps in improving efficiency of young evaluators in not only the ongoing assignments they are involved in but also adds valuable insights to the evaluation findings.
Opportunities to interact with clients and partners helps young evaluators to streamline their thought process; uphold their emotional intelligence; and make better decisions. It helps the young evaluators to articulate their presentation of thoughts and analysis in a more professional manner.
At CMS, we provide as much exposure as possible to at least a couple of young evaluators every year in key evaluation assignments. We aim to develop a second line of evaluators in leadership roles. Irrespective of young evaluators joining CMS, as interns (short-term) or as young professionals (long-term), we always aim to inculcate good evaluation behaviour in them. No doubt, some stay back and continue with CMS while others move on for better opportunities. The challenge continues and so does our efforts towards creating a team of emerging evaluators!
Alok Srivastava is the Director of CMS Social at the Centre for Media Studies, with nearly three decades of experience in the development evaluation sector. He is a regular resource person on evaluation and ethics, in particular. Alok is one of the founding members of the Evaluation Community of India (ECOI) and ex-convenor of the Inter-Regional Initiative for Professionalization of Evaluation (IRIPE). He has contributed papers and articles on evaluation-related issues in esteemed journals and publications. Connect with Alok on LinkedIn.
[1] Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, 2011
Disclaimer: The content of the blog is the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily reflect the views of Eval4Action co-leaders and partners.
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