This article is written by Kate McAlpine, Director, Citizens 4 Change

The positive impact from investing in young people far outweigh the costs. That’s not just my opinion — [it’s a scientific fact](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17%2930872-3/fulltext?dgcid=shorthand_website_adolescent-health).

And at the same time, policy-makers and planners are obliged by the universal human rights to protect children’s rights to survival, protection, development and to participation.

However, neither science-based nor human rights arguments have led to the necessary investments in children and young people; investments that are truly needed to unleash their potential and foster inclusive development.

So this is the conundrum: if science and human rights are insufficient arguments for investing more in young people, is there an alternative that would help us make the case more convincingly for senior leaders in government?

The social value argument

Social value is used to measure the relative importance people place on the changes — for example increased confidence, new skills, safer communities —  they experience in their lives.

Derived from this, the social return on investment approach applies a set of principles within a framework to measure and account for social value. The approach measures change in ways that are relevant to the people who contribute to them, and tells the story of how change is created by measuring social, economic, or environmental outcomes and using monetary values to account for them. This enables a ratio of benefits to costs to be calculated.

For every $1 USD invested in this youth programme there is a social return equivalent of $38

Involving stakeholders is fundamental to the approach in order to understand what changed, how important those changes were, and how long the changes endure. The approach also systematically calculates the monetary value of stakeholders’ contributions in terms of their time, effort or finance.

The value of the social return on investment approach is that it embodies the human rights principle of participation.

People who experience the interventions identify the types of value being achieved and elicit intended and unintended results — both positive and negative. The approach also enables government agencies to think through the depth and duration of the value that they create. In doing so, they get a much better understanding of how much of that value is attributable to their interventions, or whether the change would have happened anyway.

Both the process and results of a social return on investment analysis can inform strategic conversations internally about what could or should be done differently, feeding into continuous organisational improvement. It can also provide evidence that strengthens the case to funders.

A massively good investment

I recently used the social return on investment approach to understand the social value being generated by a long-standing Tanzanian youth empowerment programme.

They use educational and enjoyable magazines, radio and tv shows to enhance a widespread school club movement. They impart sexual and reproductive health information and entrepreneurship education in service to fostering young people’s growth mindset.

In doing so, they follow their core hypothesis — that young people can transform society when they are given opportunities to develop their skills and competencies.

The child rights sector is comfortable about making a human rights case for investing in young people, but less so arguing its case using the language and metrics of economists and planners

My social return on investment analysis had two unexpected findings. The first was that their teacher mentors contributed the equivalent of $6.7 million USD in time, energy and skills to the programme. This demonstrates the extraordinary opportunity costs that individuals incur when they contribute to social development programmes.

In making this contribution visible, my analysis recognises the significant value of volunteering. This is important because so many services for young people are subcontracted to voluntary agencies rather than being delivered by the State. The free labour that these volunteers provide is rarely accounted for, and things that are not accounted for are rarely valued.

The second finding was the sheer scale of the return on investment. The preliminary analysis reveals that for every $1 USD invested in this youth programme there is a social return equivalent of $38. Similar analyses of an intensive family support programme for street connected youth revealed a return on investment of 5:1; and a return of almost 6:1 from supporting young people with complex needs as they transition to adulthood.

Children pay if our arguments are subpar

An argument that puts a financial proxy on the return from programmes for young people may carry more weight with government planners and policy-makers.

The child rights sector is comfortable about making a human rights case for investing in young people, but less so arguing its case using the language and metrics of economists and planners. There is a clear positive economic return from well-designed interventions that targets young people.

Children’s advocates need to make an economic case about the costs of maltreatment and about the return from investing in young people if they are to effectively capture the attention of policy-makers and public service planners.

After all, the numbers are on our side — we just have to make the case effectively. — Kate McAlpine

(Picture credit: Unsplash)