On Wednesday September 25th, members of the Youth Lived Experience Expert (YLEE) team on the Chafee SOTA project, including Kaitlyn Ender (Professional Research Assistant at the Kempe Center), Scentrellis Dixon, Carmen Gomez, and Edisa Niyifasha, presented to members of OPRE on the importance of authentic youth engagement. The presentation highlighted YLEE contributions to the project and lessons learned about how to effectively engage young people in research and evaluation. The presentation was very well received by OPRE and the YLEE team have been asked to develop additional materials with their recommendations for best practices for authentic engagement of lived experience experts. The YLEE team and those at Kempe who work on the Chafee SOTA project are excited about the positive impact of utilizing youth participatory action research (YPAR) and believe that this will pave the way for similar opportunities to be available in future federal projects.
