Tackling the youth unemployment crisis through rigorous evaluation and impact,

The King's Trust Canada is thrilled to announce a collaboration with Queen’s University. 

Through the QEval program in the Faculty of Education, The King’s Trust Canada is honoured to have the expertise of Queen’s faculty and students designing a meaningful framework to evaluate program results more efficiently and effectively for our flagship 360 program, set to launch in fall 2024.

The partnership with QEval will focus on a pilot program evaluation, in response to youth employability issues and challenges, for immediate feedback and program augmentation, solidifying a plan for upcoming 5 years. Following, a strategy for a long range quantitative and qualitative research evaluation of 5-10 years to capture economic and social outcomes and impacts of our 360 program will be developed. Together, the partnership will establish the fundamental pieces of evaluation theory to apply new knowledge and skills for the evaluation of The King’s Trust Canada 360 programing. 

QEval is an innovative co-learning experience that engages graduate students to develop and design real world evaluation plans for community partners. This experience is supported by the principal’s office as part of their focus on community-engagement and includes foundations of evaluation, application of evaluation with partners, and reflections of evaluation learning. The course has been developed as part of the Evaluation Capacity Network, a SSHRC funded initiative to develop the capacity for program evaluation across Canada based on models offered by the University of Manitoba (Mignone et al) and the University of Alberta (Gokiert et al). QEval was first offered in Spring 2021 by Dr. Michelle Searle and represents one of Ontario’s first interdisciplinary co-learning opportunities to study evaluation and community-engaged scholarship. 

Youth helping youth - QEval offers a dynamic environment where learners and community partners collaborate closely. During an intensive week in June, partners work with student teams to develop and refine evaluation plans tailored to their community program. Evaluation is a broad, practice-oriented discipline which involves the systematic collection and analysis of data to make evidence-informed decisions about programs and initiatives. By asking key evaluation questions such as "Is this program meeting its goals?" and "How can we implement this program better?", evaluation helps organizations measure program effectiveness and guide future steps. Further, evaluation includes the development of diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies and skills to support youth programming. 

Farah Mohamed, CEO of The King's Trust Canada, stated, "What gets measured gets done and TKTC has a lofty goal of helping 100,000 young people facing barriers increase their employability over the next ten years. Partnering with Queen's University through the QEval program, we will be able to ensure excellence in our program, while measuring and demonstrating the effectiveness of our programs to achieve our mission!” 

Dr. Michelle Searle, Assistant Professor of Educational Evaluation said, "Involving The King's Trust Canada in QEval enriches our learning environment and provides invaluable insights for our students. We look forward to a fruitful partnership that will benefit both our students and the youth who take part in the 360 program as part of the important mission of The King’s Trust Canada."