The National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) leads a national Equality & Intercultural Programme that supports youth organisations to embed equality, anti‑racism and intercultural practice in everyday youth work.
NB Social Justice Studio was commissioned to undertake an external evaluation of this programme, with a brief to provide an honest, evidence‑informed picture of how the programme is operating and what is needed for its next phase.
Purpose and framing
The evaluation was designed as a collaborative, learning‑oriented process rather than a narrow compliance exercise. It sought to:
- Clarify how the programme is experienced and used across the youth sector.
- Identify strengths, pressures and structural risks in a way that is respectful to those delivering and participating in the work.
- Generate practical recommendations that can inform NYCI’s strategic planning and resourcing decisions.
The focus was on the programme’s role and contribution within a complex and changing context, rather than on scoring performance against a fixed checklist.
Approach and methods
NB Social Justice Studio adopted a qualitative, relational approach grounded in established evaluation practice. Key elements included:
- Semi‑structured conversations with stakeholders from different parts of the youth sector, exploring how the programme supports their work and where constraints are felt.
- Targeted review of programme documentation and tools to understand the intended functions and how different strands of work connect.
- Iterative sense‑making with NYCI, where emerging patterns were discussed and refined rather than presented as a final verdict without engagement.
In this evaluation cycle, youth workers’ and sector stakeholders’ perspectives formed the primary data source. Youth voice was not a central strand, and this limitation was clearly acknowledged in how findings were framed.
Headline themes
Without disclosing organisation‑specific detail, several system‑level themes emerged that are relevant beyond this single programme:
- The Equality & Intercultural Programme is widely regarded as a trusted source of guidance, training and resources on equality and intercultural youth work.
- Tools and frameworks associated with the programme are in active use and support practitioners to address issues such as racism, exclusion and intercultural tensions in day‑to‑day practice.
- Deeper and more durable change is associated with sustained engagement over time; one‑off or episodic interactions have lighter, more fragile impact.
- Demand for support on equality and intercultural issues has grown significantly, creating pressure on a relatively small specialist team.
These themes describe structural dynamics within the youth sector rather than focusing on individual organisations or incidents.
People, structures and sustainability
A recurring finding concerned the relationship between relational strength and structural support:
The programme’s credibility and reach are closely associated with the expertise and relationships of a small number of experienced staff.
This people‑led strength is a major asset, particularly in a field that relies heavily on trust and nuanced judgement.
At the same time, concentration of knowledge and relationships in a limited number of roles raises predictable questions about continuity, burnout and the ability to spread learning at scale.
The evaluation therefore emphasised the importance of complementing existing relational strengths with clearer mandate, shared ownership and proportionate infrastructure, rather than seeking to change the core character of the work.
Collaborative evaluation in practice
A central feature of this case is the way the evaluation itself was conducted. Key characteristics included:
- Partnership orientation: NYCI was engaged as a partner in enquiry. Core questions and priorities were agreed together, and findings were discussed iteratively.
- Accessible analysis: Technical concepts were translated into clear, straightforward language so that the outputs could be used by practitioners and decision‑makers with differing levels of evaluation expertise.
- Respect for constraints: Recommendations were designed with explicit attention to capacity, recognising the pressures on youth work organisations and specialist equality teams.
The result was an evaluation that provided NYCI with a structured, external perspective while remaining grounded in the realities of contemporary youth work.
Studio learning
For NB Social Justice Studio, the NYCI evaluation reinforces several principles that guide our work on collaborative evaluation:
- Evaluation is most effective when it is undertaken with organisations, not imposed on them.
- Plain, precise language is an asset: it enables findings to travel beyond senior management and into everyday practice.
- Protecting and deepening equality work often requires alignment of mandate, expectations and capacity, rather than simply adding new initiatives.
This case illustrates how collaborative evaluation can support a national programme to navigate increasing demand, protect core strengths and plan for its next strategic phase, without disclosing sensitive operational detail or compromising trust.
