Our Methods
The Development Policy Forum – Shaping Dialogue
Development Policy Forum events are generally aimed at development cooperation experts with well-founded ideas about the issue at hand. It is our job to ensure that the transfer of knowledge and experience among participants is constructive and enriching for all parties. We employ a variety of different event formats and methods to this end. The methods themselves – which include fishbowl, world café, open space, visual facilitation and others – are well known. Our unique skill is in combining or adjusting them to best serve an event’s purpose. Conceptually we focus on working with our clients to define ambitious but realistic goals. Only once the goals are clear can we devise a suitable format.
In view of the plethora of events available these days, a precisely defined goal is crucial to ensuring differentiation. Our aim is to organise events that stimulate impulses to drive change on an issue. In our planning, we establish exactly where agreement on a specific issue is needed in national and international processes. It has proven useful to distinguish among three overlapping and interdependent areas: topic analysis, instruments for exploring a topic, and implementation in practice.
An event on an issue that has been thoroughly analysed, but lacks practical approaches to implementation, will focus more on discussion with practitioners, for instance. The event might even be held at an implementation site so participants can work with a practical example. The Forum organised a discussion event in Tunisia one year after the political upheaval, for example, to assess the situation on location with young, active stakeholders.
In contrast events that address development and have an obvious, if not yet clearly defined, relevance for the future benefit from a format that helps participants move beyond the boundaries of their own thought processes. This kind of creative exchange promotes the development of shared visions of the future. The Future Forum series, organised by the Development Policy Forum on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), is one example of this type of format.
A wide range of factors has to come together to make an event successful and ensure it generates added value for a national or international process. The Development Policy Forum takes all of them into account in the preparation process: format, participants, venue, environment, keynote and a suitable programme of side events. We’re not satisfied unless participants have had the opportunity to contribute their own ideas and views, and also broaden, enrich, and, ideally, question them.