MOST Schools are capacity-building activities focused on strengthening the competencies for evidence-informed decision-making in Member States. They help develop the capacity of researchers and decision-makers to translate knowledge into action. Their primary goal is to support long-term sustainable development in contexts where capacity gaps may be a major constraint to translating research into action.

The training sessions are conceived on the basis of bottom-up demands arising from specific needs in concrete contexts, mainly in low- and middle-income countries.

MOST Schools contribute to enlarge the pool of qualified young professionals from different backgrounds (academia, government and civil society). This is another means by which MOST helps to strengthen the research-policy interface in the context of the 2030 international development agenda.

The organization of MOST Schools follows four principles:

• Flexibility: they respond to specific and concrete contexts;
• High quality: capacity development complies with scholarly standards of excellence and with advanced training practices;
• Accelerating dissemination: they provide a multiplying strategy for spreading knowledge;
• National ownership: they are driven by incentives of communities of practice operating in Member States.