City at Peace-Los Angeles measures its effectiveness with a thorough evaluation process. Each City at Peace program engages in three types of evaluation:

Process Evaluation.
This is built into the City at Peace curriculum and encourages the participants, under the guidance of the Youth Production Team, to examine the program and the interactions of the youth with each other and their staff.

Formative Evaluation.
This examines the degree to which students benefit from the program in acquiring:
1) leadership skills,
2) conflict resolutions skills,
3) improved communication skills,
4) community advocacy skills, and
5) performing arts/self-expression skills.

Using pre- and post-program design involving self-report and staff ratings, the evaluators will assess youth (and staff) to determine if there are distinct skill-set improvements in each of these five areas.

Empirical Outcomes.
While many lives have clearly been changed for the better through participation in City at Peace programs, we understand the need to capture these changes through empirical outcomes research. Using a well-established set of youth-development 'assets' identified through 40 years of social science research by the Search Institute for Youth Development (www.SearchInsititute.org) in Minneapolis, we assess how many of the 40 identified 'protective assets' a young person has when entering our program and how many more have been developed by the end of the year.

Beyond the evaluation of the program's impact, we will assess the organization's potential for creating sustainable change. Each year of City at Peace-Los Angeles's development, its Board's growth, composition and activities will be reviewed and measured against the objectives set by the Board, Los Angeles' Managing Director and City at Peace-National.