Assessment Made Easy, Fun & Meaningful!
What factors are critical when we look at successful movements led by youth people? This was one of the core questions that motivated us to revisit our Impact framework earlier this year. Subsequently, this also became one of the driving questions for a research project on Shift to study its long-term potential and impact.
What factors are critical when we look at successful movements led by youth people?
This was one of the core questions that motivated us to revisit our Impact framework earlier this year. Subsequently, this also became one of the driving questions for a research project on Shift to study its long-term potential and impact. The findings revealed both enabling factors such as motivation, group diversity, partnerships, networks, financial base, etc., and challenges around rigid structures, power inequalities and inadequate institutional capacities to incorporate young voices. Combined with practical insights gathered over the past 5 years operating in over 20 countries, we now have a revised impact framework and tool: meet our Evolution Tracker.
We all agree on the importance and need for assessments. However, not all of us agree on how assessment should be done. Most current approaches to evaluation employ an extractive logic where young people are seen as subjects to whom assessments are administered. For young people taking the assessment, it often resembles the tests and exams, along with the accompanying boredom and anxiety.
Instead, assessments should be yet another empowering tool in a young changemaker's growing resource arsenal, providing them with useful, relevant and meaningful data to make good decisions.
The Evolution Tracker moves away from this approach and instead merges innovation from the EdTech and gamification space to create a fun and interactive experience. By playing the Evolution Tracker, young activists respond to prompts that spark reflection about their own journey, whilst subtly educating them on indispensable factors that matter deeply for nurturing successful movements.
This approach provides Shifters with insights and data they need to effectively improve their strategy, group governance and sustainability in a language and medium most conducive to them; it also better allows them to track their progress as they move towards their long term goals.
For the Fun Adults facilitating this game, the ease of implementation has been drastically lightened since the otherwise arduous task of data collection and analysis is now automated through the game app. With this also comes greater transparency and instant access to the data gathered between all partners, equally.
Since young people are at the center of everything that Shift does, the assessment process loops around and ends with them. After analysing the data, we get back to the young people with their Evolution Scorecard, a graphic-heavy, youth and child-friendly card guiding young people about their progress on their journey to become influential change agents.
Over several years, this makes it easy to track longer-term change (even without Shift in the picture) since young people would simply have to play the game once every year, without additional resources or intensive training. For the fun adult, having this periodic data set also enables them to have their finger on the pulse of youth and child-led movements within their localities; it would also help better inform their programmatic priorities, particularly on capacity building and progressive scaling up.
Evolution Tracker in Action
Piloted on
3rd August 2024
Total time taken
~30 minutes
Shift groups:
3
Educate their fellow children and youth about sexual and reproductive health & rights
Legal advocacy on procedural rights and duties of children who come in contact/conflict with the law
The 3 Shift groups were gathering for a multi-media workshop. I requested the fun adult for a 30-minute slot to try the tool, which she kindly agreed to.
After a brief introduction and instruction, 17 statements were projected onto the screen sequentially that prompted responses across the 9 categories and 17 indicators of successful child and youth-led movements. The Shifters turned their papers to indicate their response; once everyone was ready, their responses were scanned using an app. This automatically logged all responses, as the camera scanned from one side of the room to the other capturing all the paper responses.
Following this exercise, their responses were then exported into a database that calculates their average scores per group and generates a categorisation of where they are on their evolutionary journey to become Influential change agents. Finally, we put this insight into a child-friendly Evolution Scorecard which is given back to the Shifters. See the attached Scorecard for a sample.
Conversation with a born Fun Adult
When we say someone is a 'Fun Adult', we mean that they are simultaneously a facilitator, mentor, partner, cheerleader, young-at-heart, believer and a cool uncle or aunt that young people look up to. We work very hard to create Fun Adults at Shift, but sometimes we find that some adults just get it. They are just born with it!
When we say someone is a 'Fun Adult', we mean that they are simultaneously a facilitator, mentor, partner, cheerleader, young-at-heart, believer and a cool uncle or aunt that young people look up to. We work very hard to create Fun Adults at Shift, but sometimes we find that some adults just get it. They are just born with it!
Last month we got an email from one of our champion Fun Adults in Bhutan, Deepika, who had just heard from Gajendra, an educator. Gajendra was present at one of the Shift workshops and was,
“really inspired and wanted to adopt and adapt the Shift model for social and environmental activism or learning”.
I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to learn more from this born Fun Adult. We spoke to each other over a video call. The transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Could you tell me a bit about yourself?
I'm Gajendra Rai, and I am currently a teacher at Damphu Central School.
I teach chemistry and ICT.
Could you talk about how you saw Shift and what you thought of it? Basically what inspired you to connect with Deepika and initiate that conversation??
I feel Shift is really inspiring, especially because you don't need lots of things to do it. Even within a short duration of time, the youths can come up with very creative initiatives and solutions on whatever issues they feel is appropriate.
And another thing I also feel is that this is one of the powerful programs where the voice of the youth has been captured and they are given the freedom to share their thoughts, discussions, and ideas for collaboration.
As a much closer observer and a mentor to most of these students, what were your observations and reflections on how young people experience Shift?
You know at the end of the program, I could feel that the individual participants in the group felt that their voices had been heard; even those that were very silent by nature. I asked some of them “So how did you feel today?” and they shared that “Today, I feel I could thoroughly express myself. My thoughts have been counted”.
I feel that I also have to give the ripple effect to Shift but before I could even share my thoughts the participants were coming up to me and saying “Sir, why don’t we combine Shift with a project that we already have that has been funded to make it even bigger?” Shift program has ignited inspiration within them. They don't want to stop. They want to involve as many of the people as they can.
What challenges do the young people and students that you teach face?
As an educator, I also had that same question for myself. How can we improve the mentality of always blaming the systems or blaming themselves? Basically what I feel is that they are lacking the inspiration within and they reach a point where they stop believing in themselves. They are not taking up the opportunities. They have the talent but lack the confidence in themselves to come forward. They need the guidance. This changed when I experienced Shift last time because they were trying to move towards positive change and also wanted to transfer that type of quality to their friends. Youth-to-youth bonds are much stronger than the elder-to-youth ones.
Is there anything else that you would like to add that I haven't had the chance to ask you?
I'm also planning to include Shift as a Professional Development course for my teacher colleagues and for our school leaders, captains, and counsellors because I feel that it would be useful in resolving any sort of problems if they have the skills nurtured by Shift.