How Did Participants Feel About the Pretoria Conference?

The evaluation of this year’s SNRD meeting in South Africa can be viewed as a good reflection of the overall success of the conference. The feedback the organising team received was exceptionally positive!

Here are some results from the analysis of the individual anonymous evaluation forms that all participants had been asked to complete at the end:

• Looking at the overall participation of the conference, 47% were field staff – of which 17% were programme or project managers -, 24% head office staff and 20% national staff. Consultants made up 7% of participants. There were requests to raise the relatively low share of national staff in future conferences.
• The keynote speech by Ibrahim Mayaki was highly appreciated as well as the informal exchange at the fireside with Heike Henn from BMZ.
• On action besides the plenary sessions and the mini-workshops: According to the feedback, Supporting Rural Youth Employment with Pan-African Initiatives and Agricultural Programme was a highlight. But also, in general, the great variety of open spaces was noted positively. As in previous years, the key point for many was to meet new colleagues and exchange informally. However, there was also mention that the marketplace could have been integrated better to allow for more interaction. The panel discussions were seen as to have taken up too much time.
• This was the first conference with interpretation for the francophone speakers of the network. In terms of logistics and availability in the working group sessions, they felt there was was still room for improvement.

Overall, we received a very positive feedback for the 2017 SNRD Conference. People stated that they were very satisfied with this year’s conference in general.