Second IMPACT Europe consortium meeting

On 10 and 11 May 2016, IMPACT Europe consortium partners and advisory board members gathered in Brussels for the 2016 IMPACT Europe consortium meeting, which was hosted at RAND Europe’s premises. The consortium meeting provided participants with an opportunity to engage in a comprehensive stock taking of progress made so far with regard to meeting IMPACT Europe’s objectives. In particular, consortium partners looked back to project’s developments occurred since the 2015 Paris consortium meeting and discussed strategies for ensuring the continued refinement, visibility, and dissemination of IMPACT Europe’s outputs, as well as their future sustainability.

With a view to taking stock of past achievements, RAND offered a presentation and demonstration of use of the fully-developed and functioning prototype of the online evaluation toolkit platform. Following this, VJI offered a presentation taking stock of ongoing activities to pilot the prototype toolkit with end-users, as well as of the trainings and engagements with end-users delivered in previous months. The presentation proved to be a fruitful opportunity for consortium partners to discuss initial feedback received from end-users in the framework of the training sessions, as well as to start identifying overarching messages and points to be taken on board and implemented in the upcoming toolkit refining activities.

Looking towards the future, consortium partners engaged in an extensive exchange of views with attending members of the IMPACT Europe advisory board. On this occasion, the discussion touched on a wide range of themes of strategic importance, focusing in particular on: i) the implementation of the communication and dissemination strategy, ii) further advances in ensuring effective and continued end-user engagement throughout pilot activities, and iii) the sustainability of the IMPACT Europe evaluation toolkit beyond June 2017, when IMPACT Europe will formally come to a close.

[Image shared by Matt B via Flickr; CC BY 2.0]