Swedish Rural Network Self assessment Nordic Baltic Rural Network meeting

82 organisations and authorities have a common Rural Network. 52 of them are actively participating in thematic working groups (TWG)

We are the Swedish Rural Network!

Rural devlopment program EU-commission The stakeholders – network members Effects - Goals National Rural Network

NRN Self-assessment Why self-assessment and how to use the results? How our ”network members” in TWG assess their results. How we assess results on a regularly basis, using our activity plan as a self-assessment framework.

Common understanding of needs Agreement of what to do Agreement of how to do it Actions and assessment of results Purpose of self-assessment? To keep a partnership (such as TWG) on track towards common objectives To see if it is worth the money and time To feed in to the yearly planning process of the steering group To feed in to the independent evaluation of impacts (“To what extent has the national rural network contributed to achieving the objectives laid down in the Regulation”)

Members in TWG assess their results Example from Youth TWG Increase youth participation in rural development More projects planned and performed by youth within the RDP According to the working plan for the TWG Conferences, Workshops, Report, Trainings, Check of the NSU web site 1)Actions 2)Common assessment of results by comparing statistics of projects and by target group survey Needs? What to do/achieve? How to do it? Do we need to change?

Activity plan as a self-assessment framework From our Activity plan : “When the evaluator are studying the activities carried out it is important that the outcomes and results are documented and that it is clear how they are expected to contribute to the overall objectives. Most specific objectives are difficult to measure in quantitative terms. Therefore, most of the results will be followed up by asking target groups how they assess that they have benefited from the efforts and if they can use the knowledge they gained.” The intervention logic of every focus area is described in the Activity plan: 1)Network needs 2)Changes we want to achieve meeting the priority needs through network activities 3)Overall objectives which the results will contribute to and how The activities, the operational objectives and the expected outcomes are described in the TWG activity plans. There are also descriptions of how outcomes and results shall be monitored