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  <atom:title type="html">Learning Among IW Projects</atom:title>
  <atom:subtitle>GEF IW:LEARN's Dann Sklarew and Janot Mendler de Suarez invite and highlight opportunities for GEF IW partnerships to learn good practices from one another.</atom:subtitle>

  <atom:updated>2007-07-03T18:47:43+03:00</atom:updated>

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    <atom:entry>

      <atom:title>Ready for the Fourth GEF IW Conference?</atom:title>

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      <atom:id>d977e0a441cf1d3ffa3c2ccc8bc23e7f</atom:id>
      <atom:summary>An introduction to the Fourth GEF International Waters Conference as a learning opportunity for all GEF-supported IW partnerships.</atom:summary>

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&lt;p&gt;



Dear GEF IW Partners and Conference Participants:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Greetings from GEF IW:LEARN -- and thank you for your plans to
participate in our Fourth GEF International Waters Conference (IWC4).
Based on your feedback from previous ones, this Cape Town conference
is a &lt;b&gt;an active learning conference&lt;/b&gt; reformulated and distinct
form all previous GEF IW Conferences
in
several important ways: &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First and foremost, &lt;b&gt;our &lt;a href="http://www.getf.org/iwc4/agenda.cfm"&gt;agenda&lt;/a&gt; has rapidly
evolved to address your
biggest challenges.&lt;/b&gt; Over 90 registrants have already identified 175
&lt;a href="http://www.getf.org/ewebeditpro/items/O38F12415.pdf"&gt;challenges
you face&lt;/a&gt; in making your International Waters projects
successful. I personally have been analyzing and organizing these
challenges to
ensure our time together in Cape Town is &lt;b&gt;directly useful to you &lt;/b&gt;in
overcoming common challenges.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Second, our format offers numerous &lt;b&gt;opportunities for you to
actively seek and obtain the answers you need&lt;/b&gt;. As the &lt;a href="http://www.getf.org/iwc4/agenda.cfm"&gt;agenda and session
descriptions&lt;/a&gt; show, participatory, small group
discussions predominate our IWC4 sessions. We're using various
interactive
formats to help you find knowledge you need, share your own applicable
knowledge, and spontaneously collaborate to solve similar problems
among GEF IW projects around the world. We'll also introduce new ways
of learning from each other, such as project clinics, world cafe and
open space, and an innovation marketplace -- some of which you
could then adapt to &lt;b&gt;facilitate learning among your own partners
and stakeholders&lt;/b&gt;. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Third, &lt;b&gt;our conference celebrates the real achievements, innovations
and impacts
by GEF projects&lt;/b&gt; towards realizing our shared vision of a time when
sharing the perpetual benefits of our water planet fully transcends our
political
boundaries. In the spirit of our "regional" days of past conferences,
your program committee has:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;invited several projects from our African host region to share
their achievements in a lively and inspirational manner, other projects
to present documentaries of their accomplishments; &lt;br /&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;welcomed all participants to help us adapt their greatest
innovations at our competitively-judged innovation marketplace
exhibition, and to organize your own "participant-led sessions" as you
see fit on the fourth day of our conference;&lt;br /&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;incorporated insights from our local project host, from Benguela
Current (BCLME), and other advanced and soon-to-graduate projects, like
the Danube River, into agenda delivery.&lt;br /&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;
This is not a PowerPoint presentation-driven conference. Instead, IWC4
features plentiful opportunities for active learning from one another,
spontaneous collaborative discussions, and direct transfer of practical
knowledge among dozens of GEF-supported partnerships around the world. 
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Finally, our 6 conference themes have been selected to serve as focuses
for ongoing learning across the GEF IW community:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a class="state-published visualIconPadding url" href="../../governance-blog/"&gt;Good IW Governance and
Institutions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;: how to promote
good governance
and build institutions to promote transboundary waters management.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt; &lt;b&gt;&lt;a class="state-published visualIconPadding url" href="../../policies-blog/"&gt;GEF IW Policies and
Procedures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;: examination of
emerging GEF policies and procedures pertinent to IW
projects and their partners.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a class="state-published visualIconPadding url" href="../../financing-blog/"&gt;Financing and Sustaining
IW Partnerships&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;: ongoing
mechanisms to financially
support GEF IW projects throughout their project life cycle, and
indefinitely thereafter.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a class="state-published visualIconPadding url" href="../../tools-blog/"&gt;IW Scientific and
Technical Tools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;: innovative
and effective scientific and
technical tools for IW management, e.g.,  SAP implementation,
constructed wetlands, and economic valuation.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a class="state-published visualIconPadding url" href="../../m-and-e-blog/"&gt;Measuring IW Impacts and
Results&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;: monitoring and
evaluation of impacts and results in GEF IW projects.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a class="state-published visualIconPadding url" href="../"&gt;Learning Among IW
Projects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;: opportunities for
GEF IW
partnerships to learn good practices from one another.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
To this end, each of the theme titles above links to a web log, or "&lt;a href="../../../blog"&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;," on the IW:LEARN Web site
where GEF IW partners are posting insights and inquiries regarding each
of these themes. We invite you to examine and provide your own
perspectives* on these blog pages now, during the conference and even
after you return home. You can also subscribe to receive email or news
of new blog postings, using tools on the right side of each blog page.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
For those of you eager to learn more details about the conference, I
encourage you to visit links to detailed information on our IWC4
conference Web site's &lt;a href="http://www.getf.org/iwc4/agenda.cfm"&gt;agenda
page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
Information there includes the agenda-at-glance, an orientation packet
for participants, session descriptions, and the list of your own
"challenges" as you provided them upon your registration.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Fourth GEF IW Conference, in fact GEF IW:LEARN as a whole, exist to
ensure your IW projects can learn from one another, adapt and transfer
good practices and jointly address and overcome common IW challenges.
Thus, our success depends on you: you own leadership, curiosity, and
goodwill in expressing your needs from others and your unique insights
for others. Thus, we encourage every one of you to approach this
conference as a rare opportunity to simultaneously learn, inform and
advance international waters management in our respective regions and
around the world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I wish you the very best in your preparation and travel to Cape Town,
and throughout our most interactive and &lt;i&gt;enjoyable&lt;/i&gt; GEF IW
Conference ever.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/i&gt;Kind regards,&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Dann Sklarew&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/i&gt;* For those unfamiliar with blogs, please see instructions at: &lt;a href="../../../iw-help/help/how-to/working-with-the-blog"&gt;http://www.iwlearn.net/iw-help/help/how-to/working-with-the-blog&lt;/a&gt;

          ]]>
      </atom:content>

      <atom:author>
        <atom:name>Dann Sklarew</atom:name>
      </atom:author>

      <atom:published>2007-07-01T18:55:00+03:00</atom:published>

      <atom:updated>2007-07-03T18:47:43+03:00</atom:updated>

      
        <atom:category term="Conference"/>
      
      
        <atom:category term="IW:LEARN"/>
      
      
        <atom:category term="Global Environment Facility"/>
      
      
        <atom:category term="INTERNATIONAL WATERS"/>
      
      
        <atom:category term="International waters"/>
      

    </atom:entry>

  

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