While many enterprises were closing down or reducing sta numbers, many cooperatives and social enterprises in- creased their employees by as much as 2% per year, and in this study we even see cases where in the ve-year period from 2008 to 2012 employ- ment doubled. The importance of the social economy for youth employment has grown in the recession years. This study has been carried out to understand the priority initiatives that can be undertaken by the social economy organizations themselves and the institutions with educational tasks (university, secondary schools, training centres) to foster the meeting of the supply and employment de- mand for quali ed young people. Youth agency has been chosen as a possible youth work outcome in an attempt to go beyond an adult-centric view focused on the identification of those skills required in order to become an adult. A theoretical framework and a pattern of theory-based concepts are developed within the paper in order to help evaluation research to investigate those mechanisms through which the interplay between non-formal education and informal learning may lead to the strengthening of young people’s agency in youth centres. Therefore, the potential of theory-based evaluation is argued to be an effective evaluation model, able to gather evidence of youth work outcomes and mechanisms by looking, moreover, into the complex and sometimes unpredictable processes of non-formal education and informal learning. The present paper aims to shed light on ways of dealing with the paradox of formalizing the non-formal that arises when youth work is required to operate on the basis of outcomes and target-based non-formal education programmes. This research has helped in developing several such tools with the specific intent of understanding how youth centres could become agents of social equality through the provision of opportunities for participation and learning. In particular, the evaluation studies carried out in this research have helped develop policy building tools that policy makers and youth centres can use in order to learn how an intervention produces specific effects through a series of intermediate mechanism. On the whole, valuable contribution can be drawn from the theoretical and empirical studies carried out in this research in terms of how to develop youth policies that acknowledge centre-based youth work as a setting for non-formal education and an opportunity for youth participation. Specifically, a quasi-experimental evaluation design was adopted in order to analyse the mechanisms through which the interplay between non formal education and informal learning may influence the strengthening of personal agency. A second theoretical perspective led the research to evaluate how youth centres operate as an appropriate setting for planning and carrying out interventions in non-formal education. Furthermore, case studies of youth centres in England were selected with the aim of exploring good practice with regard to both the participation of young people and the strategies of sustainable development of the centre. A survey of youth centres was carried out in England and in Italy, with the national samples built using a snowball method. Subsequent studies aimed to focus on the internal dynamics of youth participation in operative youth centres, as well as on the association between youth participation and team empowerment. In particular, a series of studies stemmed from the choice of a case of public programme in Italy aiming to involve young people both in terms of design and management of new youth centres. A first perspective regarded participation conceived as an opportunity for young people to exercise decision-making power and to play a role in the implementation of youth centres. To this end, an interdisciplinary theoretical framework was constructed through a combination of sociological, psychological and pedagogical theories. This research specifically tried to identify those characteristics of youth work that lead it to affecting a more equal distribution of development opportunities for young people in the field of non-formal and informal education. The purpose of the present research was to evaluate the specific functioning of centre-based youth work.
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