Constucting success: The conundrum of evaluating a community-based program for street-involved youth

Community-based arts programs (CBAPs) for street-involved youth in Canada are notoriously vulnerable to funding cuts. This vulnerability can be traced to the existing gulf between the way government funders like Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), CBAPs like Kensington Youth Theatre and Employments Skills (KYTES), construct and measure success. Currently, youth perspectives are conspicuously missing from discussions about the impacts of these programs. To gain a fuller understanding of the current dilemmas CBAPs face, this thesis asks: (1) How do stakeholders including youth, KYTES, and HRSDC construct success? and, (2) What are the implications of these findings for program evaluation? This thesis suggests that KYTES and HRSDC often use limited constructions and measures of success. It calls for structural and conceptual shifts in evaluative criteria and practices and the implementation of Youth Participatory Evaluation (YPE), an alternative evaluative strategy, to address current dilemmas surrounding program development and evaluation.