7: Reflecting and evaluating

In participatory work, the process is just as important as the outcome.

The nature of participative work means that it is often experimental and involves new ways of working.

There is often a process of testing out new activities and methods as you go.

In every project or activity there is a lot to be learnt

What worked well and what didn’t?
What would have made this experience better?
What didn’t we think about beforehand that we should next time?

Throughout the Our Voices programme we have learnt how important it is to capture and document learning and reflections from all of those involved:

the children and young people
the facilitators
the partner organisations and;
the audiences or end users of project outputs.

It is also important to evaluate this work to be able to share with others what impact, and ‘added value’, comes when we collaborate with children and young people with lived experience of sexual violence.

Pausing and reflecting

We have seen the importance of pausing, reflecting and documenting learning as new activities, tools and processes are tested.

We have also heard from those we have worked with (participants, partners and children and young people) that having the space to reflect, hear from others, and share learning can help them navigate current challenges they may be facing, spark innovation and support new ways of thinking.

Practice example: Ongoing reflection when developing peer mentoring programmes

As part of the Our Voices Too project, we undertook a study to learn more about peer support for young people (aged 10–24 years) who had been impacted by sexual violence and how such initiatives work in practice.

Twenty-five participants from 12 different organisations and initiatives, located in five countries, with experience of engaging in peer support initiatives for young people affected by sexual violence, took part in the study.

Through this study we learnt about a number of challenges participants had encountered when setting up peer support models.

Emphasis was placed on the importance of pausing to reflect on these challenges, and having space to adapt, and consider different solutions and strategies, to minimise the risk of challenges re-occurring.

This research illustrated how critical reflection was a key strategy in keeping everyone involved safe.

Read more about this aspect of critical reflection in the article ‘Keeping the informal safe’: Strategies for developing peer support initiatives for young people who have experienced sexual violence.

Capturing and sharing learning

There are different tools and strategies to aid reflective practice. The selection of these is likely to be guided by the aim and nature of the project.

We have used different approaches throughout the Our Voices Programme. Our partners and colleagues have shared how this has been an important part of self and team development.

Reflective practice can be done:

Individually (through keeping confidential, anonymised field notes, diaries, sketches, journals)
In pairs with a supervisor, mentor or critical friend
In teams with colleagues
Collaboratively across multi-partner projects
In groups through joining networks and communities of practice
Externally through sharing reflections with wider audiences e.g. through publishing

Practice example: Capturing reflections during and after workshops with children and young people

During the Our Voices Too project, we asked partners to keep a detailed anonymised field log to capture details of each session.

As part of this, facilitators were asked to reflect on what worked well, what worked less well and to capture any surprises and observations.

This log was helpful for the team to identify any changes that needed to be put in place in upcoming sessions.

It also identified important learning for us as the coordination team to understand some of the challenges and to think about how these could be addressed in future projects.

Challenges facilitators noted in this project included that:

Some of the young people could approach the advocacy group as a therapeutic group where they shared their own stories and memories rather than focussing on the session goals.
External consultants they worked with could sometimes ‘push’ young people into making decisions related to the development of resources to fit with their deadlines; rather than working at a pace that worked for the young people.
Facilitators sometimes were concerned that young people had high expectations for what they could change during the lifespan of the project and the facilitators did not want to raise expectations
Young people could feel anxious at certain points in the project and needed extra levels of support
Young people could have different ideas and disagree about what actions should be taken and how to present themselves externally to others.

Based on this learning, we have been able to integrate these points in training and the development of future resources.

Practice example: Learning across partners and projects

An Our Voices Partner Meeting in 2017 brought together partners and Youth Facilitators from the LEAP Against Sexual Violence and Our Voices Too projects. 23 participants attended the two-day meeting in total from Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Hungary and the Netherlands.

One of the objectives of the meeting was to share learning from implementing the LEAP Against Sexual Violence project with the Our Voices Too partners.

This learning including the real life challenges, ethics and concerns surrounding the participation of young people affected by sexual violence in a participatory project.

Throughout the two-day meeting, participants shared their reflections on what had worked, and what hadn’t during the project.

For example, a number of innovative resources were developed through the LEAP Against Sexual Violence project, however as these were developed near the end of the project, there was not enough funded time for strategic dissemination and influencing activities.

We were able to feed this learning into the Our Voices Too project, which meant there was more focus from the start on centring the project around a clear advocacy and dissemination strategy to ensure that resources developed were targeted at specific groups.

During the LEAP Against Sexual Violence project, the partners also struggled with collecting the monitoring and evaluation data required and documenting learning from the project.

This led us to take a different approach when designing the Our Voices Too project where, as the academic partner, we built in lots of opportunities to collect this data throughout the project and therefore did not rely too heavily on the practitioners involved to do this.

Practice example: Peer learning and support through the Our Voices University Network (OVUN) PhD Forum

As part of the Our Voices III project, the Our Voices University Network (OVUN) was established to facilitate links between academics around the world in order to develop and share knowledge about the prevention of and response to child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Through establishing the network, it became clear that there was interest from PhD students to engage in these discussions.

The OVUN PhD Forum was set up to provide an online space for post-graduate students to come together bi-monthly to share their work in progress, the challenges they faced, and to gain peer support and advice.

At the initial session, members were asked what they wanted to get from the forum. They described a desire for and interest in:

hearing about others’ research, including issues they experienced and how they have/are overcoming these
sharing resources, opportunities and events
learning about different perspectives and approaches
discussing the factors that affect PhD researchers working in this field
gaining a sense of overall wellbeing and support
exploring how to navigate the safe and ethical engagement of young people in the context of doctoral studies
learning how concepts related to child sexual abuse and exploitation differ globally in different contexts.

When the forum ended in 2023, those who had taken part shared how they had valued:

the uniqueness of the space where students were all working on issues related to child sexual abuse and sexual violence
having an informal space to talk about an issue that can be hard to discuss with friends and family
learning from and being inspired by peers
the sparking of new ideas and considerations
the sharing of resources
the opportunity to informally share current ideas and thinking in motion
having the opportunity to receive feedback or be questioned about their research plans by people outside their supervisory team
working together to define and explore concepts and language
feeling reassured about the value of their research
being able to gather ideas for potential external examiners.

Read more about the OVUN PhD Forum in this briefing Our Voices University Network: a briefing on our PhD student forum.

Practice example: A community of practice for participation workers

As part of the LEAP Against Sexual Violence project, following tailored training for practitioners on young people’s participation and sexual violence, communities of practice were set up in each of the four countries involved (Bulgaria, Netherlands, Romania and the UK).

The aim of these communities of practice was to provide a forum to explore with peers some of the challenges and barriers of implementing participatory processes and to gain support in identifying strategies for dealing with these.

The communities of practice created a ‘safe space’ to discuss challenges and concerns that practitioners faced in implementing a participatory approach when working with children and young people affected by sexual violence.

Some of the challenges shared at these meetings included:

Lack of support from management
Staff changes and re-structuring within organisations
Lack of time and resources to support participatory engagement.

Feedback from the members of the communities of practice highlighted how the space supported members to find solutions to address some of the challenges they faced.

I often worry that the requests they [young people involved in the service] receive can be tokenistic and unfortunately they have been involved in projects that have been. Through the communities of practice, held as part of the LEAP project, a fellow professional told me about another group who created a request form for the work they do. I took this idea back to our group who designed their own. This form allows them to decide if they want to get involved in requests, schedule it into their available time, but also go back with feedback as to why they don’t want to be involved. This feedback explains why and gives ideas of how the request can be changed to prevent it being tokenistic. It gives the young people control and opportunity to say no, which is very important.’ (Member of the community of practice in the UK).

Read more about the learning from the LEAP community of practice A guide on developing communities of practice for services who are working with children and young people affected by sexual violence

Learn more about the LEAP communities of practice in this blog "It was a turning point".

Understanding the impact on children and young people

Children and young people who take part in a participatory group-based project or activity can experience it in different ways and share different reflections.

Children and young people who have been involved in the Our Voices programme have shared a range of thoughts on what was positive and what was more challenging, this includes:

Children and young people have shared how their engagement in projects has sometimes acted as a catalyst in their lives. For some, it has helped them in their decision-making to go to University, for example, or helped them initiate difficult conversations with people in their lives.

Trying to capture this learning is a vital part of the process.

Simple, informal and creative methods to record this learning can be built into sessions so they are not seen as separate ‘add on’ activities (though of course, participants may also feel comfortable documenting their own reflections privately).

For example, in the LEAP Against Sexual Violence project some of the young people took part in an activity ‘Put it in the Post’ where they wrote letters to themselves to help them capture their feelings and reflections around their own personal journeys of taking part in the project. Out of all the evaluation activities, young people engaged with this one the most.

As part of the Our Voices Too project, some of the youth advocates wrote blogs to share their reflections on how engagement had impacted them.

Read the reflections young people who took part in the Our Voices Too project shared in these blogs:

"I am proud to be part of the ‘Our Voices Too’ Project". A Youth Advocate from Albania shares her experiences of taking part in our Youth Advocacy Project

Youth Advocates from Moldova share their reflections on participating in the ‘Our Voices Too’ Project

Briefing: Our Voices University Network: a briefing on our PhD student forum. Read more about the OVUN PhD forum and what PhD researchers appreciated about the space for reflection and sharing.

Guide: A guide on developing communities of practice for services who are working with children and young people affected by sexual violence. Find top tips and learning from the LEAP Against Sexual Violence project's communities of practice.

Worksheets: LEAP Against Sexual Violence Project Worksheets: Evaluation. Check out a range of evaluation tools that we've used with young people to understand the impact of taking part in Our Voices projects.

Blog: "It was a turning point".Read reflections from a community of practice meeting with practitioners working to support the participation of young people affected by sexual violence in the UK.

Blog: Youth Advocates from Moldova share their reflections on participating in the ‘Our Voices Too’ Project. In this blog the five Youth Advocates from the Our Voices Too Youth Advocacy project in Moldova share their reflections and experiences of taking part in the project.

Blog: "I am proud to be part of the ‘Our Voices Too’ Project". A Youth Advocate from Albania shares her experiences of taking part in our Youth Advocacy Project. In this blog one of the Youth Advocates from the Our Voices Too Youth Advocacy project in Albania shares her experiences of being involved in the project.

Journey companion: Safe spaces for professionals. This document draws on our learning from communities of practice that have been set up as part of Our Voices projects. It summarises some of the common challenges that can impact on professionals coming together to share practice. It also includes some suggested strategies for approaching these issues and maintaining engagement.