 Hello everybody, I'm happy to be with you this second week and it was mentioned that I would like to speak about our experience and maybe I can recall a bit the discussions yesterday about evolution capacity development and as Werner mentioned my key message is that even the small volunteer organizations can and must be influential and maybe it is much more important to know what we want to reach, what we want to change, what we want to improve before asking for the money. It was mentioned that at the end money is important but it's much better to know what to do before asking money than waiting for the grant and then to decide what we'll be doing with that grant. Okay, the Czech Evolution Society was established in 2007 by four evaluators among others myself and Dima among them. So it was established or the establishment started in special witch pub in the old town of Prague by these four people and several rounds of beers in fact several rounds of meetings in that nice witch pub which doesn't exist anymore by the way and today we already have 48 members including one institutional member which is the ministry for regional development which is responsible for the European funds projects in the Czech Republic and so on and plus one honorary member which is once again Dima because he was one of the first executive director of that association. I would like to briefly mention the few achievements we reached since 2007. So our first book is about some like methodologies so we agree the Code of Ethics in 2011 and four world standards for conducting evaluations in 2013 and what I consider important is that the reference to these two guides is including in the governmental regulation on national programs and it is also mentioned in all terms of reference of the governmental evaluations in the Czech Republic which is great. In the last year our members are we jointly prepared a methodology for evaluating cross-cutting principles and topics like gender, human rights, good governance, environmental and so on issues and this year we would like to finalize a methodology for procuring evaluations which should be used by Czech authorities, by the ministries and so on. So I think it's quite a good success that voluntary organizations can even contribute to establishing the system. Regarding system and structures we have a special advisory council for development cooperation under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but it includes all other ministries and some other actors and there is a special working group on evaluations where we have a seat as Czech environmental society and there is also a Czech NGO, a non-governmental organization platform for us which has another seat in this governmental council body and this group role is to approve the evaluation plans for the next two years and we can also contribute to drafting these plans. So for example for the next year new evaluations will be added one on business to business program of the Czech government and another one on so-called triangular cooperation with other donors in developing countries which is running for many years but there was no evaluation so far on that kind of projects. We also discuss in this working group the responses to the recommendations of evaluations of the current year and there is a recommendation tracking system for two last previous years where the group somehow control or monitor whether the recommendations were implemented or not and to what extent and why not and so on and the role is also to improve or approve the guidelines and the plays used for the evaluations. There is another body which was already mentioned it's a reference group on evaluations and I'm a member of the group for I think six years three years it was for three I have partial reimbursement in the past three years and for the last two or three years there is a one big improvement that we are not only commenting the evaluation reports draft reports but we can also contribute to preparation of the terms of reference including formulation of key evaluation questions and setting criteria and all that so it is very great improvement in the past few years. We participate in the governmental meetings with the evaluators selected for the evaluation we provide recommendations to draft reports and we somehow approve also to find the reports to be published on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. It was not applied 10 years ago but also thanks to our efforts and pressure all the evaluation reports are published on the website. That's true that most of them are in the Czech language but all reports have at least a summary in English and some reports are also provided in English with the Czech summary. It depends because our evaluation system is open to other evaluators from other countries there is only one problem that some documents are in Czech and the people must know what is the system about of development cooperation but the calls are open and all our evaluations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are among others published on the IPDOT listserv you will be a member of. So please join us let's try joint evaluations with some of you it's great and Czech Evaluation Society was also preparing some like a new summary reports on the evaluations from the last year especially focused on the lessons there what was working well what didn't work what were the problems on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs site in the terms of reference and what are the problems or best practices used by the evaluators so it's also another another habit we established there are some other also the reference group so we proposed a new template for the reports which are used now we somehow adjusted the criteria for selecting the contractors for evaluations so now it is much more focused on on experience and so on than other costs we were successful in changing the contracts as a violators by introducing a special clause on flexibility some slight 15 percent shifts between budget categories or within the budget categories which also improved the flexibility of evaluations and last year the Ministry of Foreign Affairs started at some SNAC workshops before launching the evaluations for the next year so all evaluators who would like to attend this workshop they can ask what will be the evaluations launch the next year what are the key requirements of the Ministry and what are the key criteria or and so on and last year we also for the first time succeeded in starting a tradition of so-called eval cafes with Ministry of Foreign Affairs and evaluators around one table and sharing the experience what was not clear in the third terms of reference what was possible to do what is not possible to do and what to follow what to repeat and so on check evaluation society definitely also provides some capacity building and not only for our members but also for our institutional partners so I can mention the trainings for the Czech Development Agency which is responsible for official development assistance for the National Platform of NGOs for us we provided trainings for the Ministry of Regional Development Labor and Social Affairs Education etc and also for some regional authorities which are responsible for national programs and the European programs implemented in the Czech Republic for our members I would like to mention something like stabilized the offer of events based on capacity development which are the pre-conferences pre-conference workshop half days usually three workshops in the afternoon before the annual conference of the Czech evaluation society we have a certified training on evolution minimum which is two days training we supported 11 years of European program for development of ocean training carried out in the Czech Republic and Slovakia since 2007 until the last year which was something like mini-ibdat usually we had around 35 countries represented we are also providing which is I think the best way providing something like mentoring for concrete organizations working with their own projects not only some templates and case studies but trying to help them to prepare good evaluations as they are ready to do and there is a system of a bulk office it is something like a round table in different organizations on specific topics we have some topics we have some voting on the website what you would like to speak about and let's speak about that about the sharing and learning achievements we have a new conference as mentioned sometimes it's today especially if we join it with some international event usually it is only in Czech but sometimes we have multi-language conferences or we use some partners to have a site event with other countries we produce a newsletter every second month we have flesh news service current information or emerging information for example about new coal request for proposals or new guidelines and so on we have a scientific journal by new which is called evolution theory and practice it's a peer-reviewed journal and you can contribute if you wish and what was a good experience also we started in 2013 we did something like a meta-evaluation or peer-review of around 25 evaluations from the past three years we were 10 evaluators participated and we read our own reports and provided feedback and trying to identify the common issues and common possibilities for improvement so it was done in 2013 for development cooperation and then 2014 for national programs and European funds and three years ago we started an evolution competition for students which is a great exercise that it's a real competition with some prices and then so on and they like it and some of them are now working for us and we just improved our website so you can check that this website check it all see that we will still we still need for example to provide more information in English and so on but it's quite new it started two months ago so we have a lot of work still and definitely we are cooperating with international organizations like the European Evolution Society and Network of Evolution Societies in Europe we presided that network with Slovakia jointly with Slovakia and the last year we cooperate with ideas international development evolution association with our neighboring country or part of our Czechoslovakia in the past Slovak Evolution Society and we are ready and keen to cooperate with other national platforms or societies but oh i can still mention one maybe as an inspiration for you because this is my life and my life changed in 2003 when i attended Ibrat in Otava at Karate University for four weeks it was great and at the same year i became a member of ideas because we are offered one year membership in ideas and now i'm a life i was called lifetime member something like that until i die okay then based of our active we were trying to do something so we proposed some activities and one of that activities was a workshop co-organized by us in the Czech Republic in Prague in 2006 with the topic of country of evolution and systems which is a ship flag of UNICEF and i think that it was the first international gathering when we were very UNICEF opened this issue of country of evolution so i'm also a bit proud of that and then the same year i became a member of ideas board or became i was elected then in 2007 we started with Ray and Linda the Czech debt and the debt selector on European programs in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and you can see that we have 539 graduates since 2017 and i'm not able to count the number of countries but it will be quite a huge number of countries then i became or was elected vice president of ideas since then i'm only a member of the election committee every year and we also participated in preparation of ideas competencies for development evaluations and evaluators managers and commissioners in 2012 and there was a code of ethics approved by the by the ideas in 2013 so this is about sounds like successes or history but what are the challenges we are in a tricky situation because we are already quite big to be managed by on a voluntary basis we are not paid for for the work for the association we have no staff in fact no office is provided by the members and so on we have no chance of getting core funding for the organization and we cannot cover all the costs but only by membership fees or conference fees we can somehow ask for a project funding but project funding for our organization is not the right way we must work for the members every day and every week and you solving the emerging issues and what can be a project okay conference it's an annual conference it's a self sustainable conference paid from them by the members and partners and so on and another issue is that we could apply for some national cultural proposals but we do not want to compete with our members we are an umbrella and the members should apply for these schools and not their umbrella so this is a big challenge and we have to solve it somehow for the next year we have some other challenges because of the system we have a rotation in the board which is quite often but maybe it's not perfect in our case because we have only two years mandate in the board and therefore it's not that easy to by the way it's not that easy to find new volunteers working for free in the positions of the board there can be some conflict of interest if I'm a board member and I'm applying for some grants and so on it can be sometimes difficult for them the rotation also means that the institutional memory is missing it's not such easy to transfer all the knowledge within two years to some other other people and it can be confusing also for some our partners and members and other other other people because even the contact persons are changing every year so we probably have to change our statues there are some other challenges and I'm ready I'm happy that we are ready to do all the work together and that they are two main pillars of the Czech evolution society one is the development cooperation and another one is national and european programs in our country and it is a totally different context it's totally different to the evolution in my country when I know everybody and everything and and the laws and people mentality I know that and in developing country it's totally different from the point of budget because we have around four to six to maybe one seven evaluations of development programs or projects per year and we have 80 or 100 evaluations of other projects now meaning governmental evaluations not NGO evaluations and so on which is another market for us the question is in predictability because every change in the government and approval of the state budget it influences the planning and it's not perfect still in our country and definitely you must use specific approaches and methods for specific kinds of evaluations and so on and definitely there are some differences in understanding the or using the evaluations by practitioners working in the field in developing countries by people working in academic sector and also by some consultants trying to join us or because they seek the market so they are trying to to get contracts and sometimes their approach is not developmental or development evaluations it's something like a normal consultancy and management and so on so maybe a few questions where you can help me what should be the role of national evolution societies it's a capacity building or advocacy and awareness raising should we work something as an ethical committee or judge if there are some problems between the clients and commissioners and evaluators who there is no perfect solution we know that can we try to find to facilitate and something like agreement or consensus should we be a chamber of evaluators something like we mentioned yesterday so it is a business or it is a it is a profession if it is a profession can we have a chamber there's something like looking at the quality and criteria and whatever what can be the mandate of such chambers there are some other recent challenges what to do with that and our experience in it that should we find some possibilities of cooperation in the next year and so on another challenge for our region Central Eastern Europe we are quite in quite a difficult position because we are a member of the European Union or we are some countries our countries are candidates for the European so we are considered as a rich countries as rich country but we are not rich we the system is not established it's not a profession in our country the demand is limited we must create a demand and we cannot afford such nice great trainings like like here many of our people so it would be very useful to to get at least partial bursaries for such important international events we are not eligible for the funds for developing countries we have not enough money like in Western Europe something like that maybe uh sorry maybe there is a another challenge we have a nice group of people here and I can say that we cooperate with if that person that person from the past and it is important to work together and to learn from our partners in developing countries and to try to help them if they need some help in evaluations and we all our organizations which are carrying out evaluations in developing countries they have team members from evaluators not only interpreters and guides they have team members from from partner countries so it's a great opportunity to work together and we are ready for that and uh as I mentioned the international competition for students we started some negotiations with Canadians that it would be nice if the winners of national competitions can meet internationally and do some international competitions somewhere using for exchange of information and approaches and sharing learning and so on so if you would like to discuss these possibilities of cooperation we will be happy to do it and now because it was launched I think two weeks ago or three weeks ago that ideas is looking for somebody who will offer the place and logistic support and says something for the global assembly which is every second tier of ideas international development devotion association and we probably will offer Prague as a place of that of that meeting but it's demanding but we are ready to do it so I think that's it I have a one last slide because and by the way it's also thanks to even 10 ideas in 2008 we organized organized this Malaysian Evaluation Society conference workshops in Kuala Lumpur and the topic was impact evaluations and so on and since then I'm trying to persuade all the people that impact evolution is one issue but much more important is impact of evaluations this is our goal to be influential and this is very important and even from that point of view I would like to repeat the first message from the first slide or second slide that even small natural evolution societies must be influential and we are ready to do and what is the great opportunity for us that we are not alone that we are members of this family of family of that and ideas and and that's it so I don't want to take your time more let us cooperate with us meet again and enjoy the rest of the 2018 and thank you for being here thank you