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Communication and Outreach

NCSA Communication Channels

Establishing a network among NCSA teams is among the objectives of the Global Support Programme, to allow for the exchange of information, experiences and lessons, mainly among the teams themselves.

Each NCSA project, the local UN Country Offices, and the Implementing Agencies are connected in regional groupings to one of eight GSP-moderated email list-serves, through which news and views can be exchanged regionally and globally. This group-email allows for raising questions to fellow NCSA teams, as well as for the distribution of lessons learned or NCSA output documents.

The global NCSA website is maintained by the Global Support Programme to provide information on the global NCSA status, outputs submitted, evaluations and analyses of NCSA results and linkages to other enabling activities and sustainable development policies. In order to be an up-to-date information hub, the website, and the GSP, depend on contributions and submissions from the NCSA teams.

GSP Outreach

Regional and sub-regional workshops provide the most direct means of interaction between the GSP and NCSA teams. Since its inception in mid-2005, the GSP has organised 9 workshops, enabling 112 countries and 230+ NCSA team members to work together intensively for 3-5 days. The key workshop participants are NCSA project coordinators, national project directors and/or technical working group or steering committee members, representing NCSA projects that are under active implementation. UN Country Office staff have also participated in each of the workshops, although only from few COs, except where it was possible to combine the NCSA workshop with another meeting that could justify the cost of participation. The workshops main aims are:

to strengthen the NCSA programme through regional progress review;
to clarify and guide the NCSA process with tools and training exercises, particularly focusing on the assessment and action planning stages of the NCSA;
to share lessons learned among the countries; and
to plan the next steps including possibilities for NCSA follow-up.

Newsletters are another means by which the network of over 150 NCSA teams and IA offices are kept up-to-date with programme activities that are recently completed or forthcoming. So far, 5 newsletters were produced and distributed:

GSP Newsletter No 5 (Sep 2006):