2.6 Relevance

Summary: Examines the importance of ensuring project activities and outcomes remain relevant to stakeholder needs and project objectives to maximize impact and effectiveness.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the concept of relevance in project planning and implementation.
2. Learn how to assess the relevance of project activities and outcomes to stakeholder needs and project objectives.
3. Recognize the importance of maintaining relevance throughout the project lifecycle.

An integral part of project proposal forms is relevance. In the Relevance section, you will be asked to associate your main purpose, sub-goals, activities and outputs in your project with the priorities in the program guide (Henriksen & Traynor, 1999, p.163). For this reason, it is recommended that you read the program guide well and think about which priorities you will refer to and how before preparing the proposal.

You are also expected to make a needs analysis in the proposal form. This needs analysis is not limited to just converting your problem tree to text. You should well justify your methodology with statistical data, research studies, reports, policy documents, scientific articles, etc. related to your project topic for solving problems, that you identified, with high added value activities. While doing this work, if the project text does not exceed the character limit, you can also specify references to articles and sources. If you are applying for a project with national or international stakeholders, you should address the entire consortium, not just your institution and region, when making these references. In this context, it is recommended that you get some feedback and data from your stakeholders. With this information, you can strengthen the relevance of your project.

For example, if you are going to make an application at European level and your project partners will be from European countries, you are expected to include local, regional, national and European levels in your project form. If you have a Project with an environmental aspect, you will also need to refer to European policy documents in this area. In addition, you will need to make an analysis of the situations in Europe and the applicant countries and support this analysis with concrete data and reports as much as possible. You can also justify using these data and analysis when choosing your project partners. Make sure that your justification is realistic, objective, concrete, understandable and based on data. On the other hand, many grant programs limit characters in the proposal text. This will require you to do your analysis as concisely as possible.