This project, "Building Character in Youth through a Game-based Solution to a Community Challenge," is designed to build evaluation capacity for two existing youth development programs, "Youth Ready" and "Evoke," as well as for Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras. The project will serve the evaluation needs of a newly integrated program that will combine Youth Ready (developed by World Vision US) and Evoke (developed by the World Bank) for new implementation in Honduras, and will contribute to building the host country's evaluation capacity, providing impact that will endure beyond the proposed project timeline and the specific programs that are the focus of this proposal. 

The project is funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation through a grant to World Vision-Honduras. Cornell's contribution is managed as a subcontract with the Institute for Research on Youth Thriving and Evaluation (RYTE) at Montclair State University, which is responsible for providing evaluation planning and capacity building during the first year of the project and consultative services for the data collection and analysis that will take place in years 2 and 3 of the project. 

The purpose of the work contributed by Cornell University is to facilitate the application of the Systems Evaluation Protocol (developed by the Cornell Office for Research on Evaluation) in this project. This will involve collaborating with project stakeholders in the development of theory of change models for three programs: Youth Ready (YR) alone; Evoke alone; and a new program (YR-E) that will integrate these two youth development programs into one. These theory of change models will be used in the development of a detailed evaluation plan for YR-E, and will serve as a foundation for increasing stakeholders' understanding of the ways that YR and Evoke overlap or provide distinct contributions to the process of change for youth participants. As the evaluation plan is implemented, the theory of change models will be revised as needed. 

Cornell's work on this project will be conducted by Dr. Monica Hargraves (Associate Director for Evaluation Partnerships, Cornell Office for Research on Evaluation), who will be working closely with Dr. Jennifer Urban, Co-Director of the RYTE Institute (who received her PhD in Human Development, with a minor in Program Evaluation and Planning here at Cornell in 2008), and with a consultant hired by the RYTE Institute who will be focusing on measure development, data collection, and analysis.