In this paper an evaluation study of a public programme that financed a regional network of 157 youth centres in the South of Italy was presented. A theory-based evaluation model was adopted to explore the causal links between different kind of participation experiences. Evaluation questions focused on three main issues: the empowerment perception of the team during the management of the centres; the empowering effect of participation in the organization of the youth centre; and the decision making abilities of the young people involved. After an exploratory study, an on-line structured questionnaire has been administered to all the centres. New youth centres appear as striving to become sustainable enterprises. However, there is a common difficulty to integrate day to day management and sustainability strategies. This difficulty is lower when project leaders participated in the design of the centres together with other young people. Thus, results confirmed that participation in the design was an empowering experience. However, this study warns against some unwanted effects of the participation. For instance, participation processes was a form of decorative consultation for half of the cases. Therefore, empirical evidence suggests further research to focus on the creation of stable participation structures inside the centres to avoid the risk of participation processes without a real effect on decisions.

The validation of non-formal and informal learning has been part of the European Union political agenda since 2001. The paper presents the results of an action-research project about how the University can reconcile considerations of the strategic value of non-formal and informal knowledge in the perspective of lifelong learning. Specifically, the paper focuses on the Lifelong Learning Centre provided by the University of Bari (Italy) to migrant people and funded by the European Fund for the Integration of non-EU immigrants (EIF).. The paper analyses assumptions, approach, outputs and outcomes of the CAP centre conceived as a form of career guidance to help immigrants to actively shape their life course.

The current formulation of European Union youth policy is not sufficient for a full understanding of what distinguishes youth work from other services or educational practice for young people. Youth work in Europe has a diverse range of fields, goals, and methods of intervention. Such diversification is considered one of the strengths of youth work, inasmuch as it is associated with its ability to adapt to the variety of problems it faces. Such flexibility is, however, likely to generate vagueness in terms of the knowledge of the special contribution expected from youth work and its execution. As a contribution to lead evaluation research to produce empirical evidence about the key-features of youth work, a theoretical framework is presented in this paper that help to identify the peculiar expected outcomes of youth work as well as those mechanisms able to generate them. Specifically, this paper focused on the ability of youth work to affect a more equal distribution of personal development opportunities for the young outside the formal education. For this purpose, sociological theories on non-formal education, educational inequalities and youth participation have been intertwined with psychological research on transition from adolescence to adulthood and with the theory of educational accompaniment in social pedagogy.

Servizi di consulenza nell'ambito della valutazione delle politiche sociali, pubbliche e private, dell'istruzione, formazione; realizzazione di ricerche valutative, progettazione e realizzazione di interventi di formazione per pubblica amministrazione, imprese private, realizzazione di indagini e sondaggi, costruzione di modelli di analisi per la valutazione, consulenze per valutazione delle performance di amministrazioni pubbliche e del sistema del welfare, cosi come meglio indicato nella prima parte dell'art 5 dell'oggetto sociale.