The project was launched by Finnish National Youth Council Allianssi. The project originated from the observation that we do not have a very comprehensive situational picture in Finland nor do we have information on how the effectiveness of youth organisation activities has been approached in practice in the other Nordic countries. It is our understanding that no similar information exists in the other Nordic countries either. Finland and the other Nordic countries are increasingly discussing the impacts, effectiveness and results of activities – including those of youth organisations. We found it would be especially useful to put together a comprehensive situational picture of how youth organisations in different Nordic countries have approached the evaluation and quality monitoring of their own activities and what practices have proven to be effective. In our investigation prior to the project, we did not find any proof that the topic had been very comprehensively studied in the past either or that previous studies had been compiled together in the form of a literature review.
The project aimed to identify the best practices in each Nordic country for the evaluation and quality monitoring of youth organisations. The project has produced information on the best practices and put together a situational picture on the evaluation of the impacts of youth organisation activities in different Nordic countries. The best practices will provide good suggestions for youth organisations on how to improve the quality of their activities, while a broader situational picture will create added value especially for public administration.
Allianssi wishes to sincerely thank all our partners in Sweden (Fryshuset), Norway (LNU) and Denmark (DUF), in addition to all the individuals or organisations who took their time to answer all the questions in the interviews. A big thank you to our team of youth researchers of the Finnish Youth Research Society r.y. who completed a huge task in doing the background work, conducting the interviews and writing the reports. We are also grateful to all the members of our national working group who supported us from the beginning. And finally, we wish to express our gratitude to the Nordic Council of Ministers for their financial support to the project.