Social Development and Public Governance > Social Development
Social Development - May 2004
From Our Manager:
I am pleased to introduce this issue of SOC's newsletter devoted to the Social Development Week. The 'week', which took place November 3-5, 2003 at headquarters, was a Bank-wide initiative to discuss in depth social development issues of importance to the Bank and the countries, share best practices, and explore some of the new priorities of the Bank's Social Development Strategy (2003).
A Bank-wide internal working group (coordinated by SDS/SOC and the Office of Learning, HRD, and with active collaboration of the country offices, RE1, RE2, RE3, RES, ROS, INDES and EXR) interviewed social sector staff to identify key questions of concern and enlisted coordinators to assemble panels on these questions. As a result, the three days were organized around three major topics: social development policies, focusing on how to improve the content of social protection, inclusion and promotion policies; social program evaluation, responding to the Banks new emphasis on impact evaluation and development effectiveness; and Bank mechanisms for social development, concentrating on questions of financing and implementation of social development programs and the Social Development Strategy. In this issue you will find the list of questions that guided the week, organized according to the main topics.
The week offered a wide range of activities: discussion panels, case study presentations by Bank staff, workshops, brown bag lunches and keynote addresses. We were fortunate to have the participation of selected national counterparts, policy makers and intellectual leaders in social development. They included Eduardo Aninat, José Pablo Arellano, Rolando Franco, Rebeca Grynspan, James Heckman, Eveline Herfkens, Maritza Izaguirre, Michael Kremer, Ricardo Paes de Barros, José Serra, Andres Palma, and Miguel Szekeley. We are thankful to them for their generosity of time and ideas. About 150 people participated, including Bank specialists, division chiefs, managers and directors. Presentations and discussions were very lively, engaging and thoughtful. We have tried here to convey a sample of the ideas discussed. Due to space limitations, this special edition newsletter, unfortunately, cannot reflect all that was presented in the talks, papers and case study reports.
I encourage you to visit our website for copies of all the written material that was presented and to send us your comments. Please visit the Social Development Week site at www.iadb.org/ sds/publications/publication_3654_e.htm.
Carlos M. Jarque
Manager, SDS
Last updated: 06/01/07
