Transformative evaluation in youth work and its emancipatory role in Southern Italy

This article draws on the experiences of a group of Italian youth workers who used Transformative Evaluation (TE) to evaluate their practice as part of a wider European research project funded by Erasmus+. The youth workers generated 151 stories of change with young people in their projects. These stories were collectively analysed and through this process the youth workers developed a greater understanding of the impact of their work and of some of the causal mechanisms that enable change to happen. Transformative Evaluation, with its sensitivity to the complexity and the critical potential of ‘lived experience’, is able to illuminate outcomes and process. The empowering and emancipatory potential of transformative evaluation is seen in the way in which it fosters youth workers’ and young people’s self-reflection.