An evaluation study of youth participation in youth work: a case study in Southern Italy

In this paper an evaluation study of a public programme that financed a regional network of 157 youth centres in the South of Italy was presented. A theory-based evaluation model was adopted to explore the causal links between different kind of participation experiences. Evaluation questions focused on three main issues: the empowerment perception of the team during the management of the centres; the empowering effect of participation in the organization of the youth centre; and the decision making abilities of the young people involved. After an exploratory study, an on-line structured questionnaire has been administered to all the centres. New youth centres appear as striving to become sustainable enterprises. However, there is a common difficulty to integrate day to day management and sustainability strategies. This difficulty is lower when project leaders participated in the design of the centres together with other young people. Thus, results confirmed that participation in the design was an empowering experience. However, this study warns against some unwanted effects of the participation. For instance, participation processes was a form of decorative consultation for half of the cases. Therefore, empirical evidence suggests further research to focus on the creation of stable participation structures inside the centres to avoid the risk of participation processes without a real effect on decisions.