In the Fall of 2023, The Evidence Network (TEN) was retained to conduct an external evaluation of the impact of YouthREX on individuals and organizations that have used YouthREX’s services.

Informed by a theory-based approach that seeks to understand the degree to which youth workers and youth-serving organizations have made use of – and been impacted by – YouthREX’s resources, programs, and services, the evaluation relied on an understanding of how a given intervention is expected to work by identifying the various steps – from the intervention activities to the desired outcomes and impacts.

TEN distributed an online survey in December 2023 to the YouthREX community that was completed by 1,253 individuals. The open-ended responses in the survey highlighted the impact of YouthREX around four key themes:

1. YouthREX Affirms + Amplifies the Experiences and Voices of Ontario’s Youth Workers
2. YouthREX Supports Knowledge Sharing + Evidence-Informed Youth Work
3. YouthREX Supports Capacity-Building + Community-Building
4. YouthREX Supports Program Design + Development + Evaluation