In close cooperation with the DeGEval team, GOPA Consultants’ department Monitoring, Evaluation and Quality (MEQ) successfully organised a two-day conference of the DeGEval working group, Development Cooperation. GOPA hosted the conference in Bad Homburg’s castle (Schloss Bad Homburg) on 11 and 12 April. More than 70 external guests from different stakeholders, including donors, political foundations, private companies & consultancies and research institutes, as well as individual M&E experts, participated at the conference.

During the panel discussions, GOPA was actively involved and highlighted its expertise in monitoring, evaluation and quality management in development cooperation. It provided insight by transferring practical knowledge from project implementation into theoretical discourse. The different discussions and inputs at the conference underlined the manifold aspects and peculiarities of the DAC criterion relevance. Fruitful – and sometimes controversial – debates took place on the criterion and its challenges in assessing its achievement in development projects. It was highlighted that this criterion is evaluated as the most positive, compared to the other DAC criteria – although the assessment is very often not sufficiently based on robust data and evidence. Altogether, the conference raised common awareness for all actors involved that the criterion relevance deserves more attention when assessing it in practice.