As a follow-up to the first meeting of the open-ended Tripartite Working Group for the review of the cooperation of UNESCO's Secretariat with National Commissions for UNESCO, held on 19 October 2012, an electronic forum (e-Forum) was launched. This online platform has been designed as a working space to collect proposals for the Action Plan to propose to the Executive Board at its 191^st session in April 2013.

An invitation was sent to all Permanent Delegations, National Commissions and Field Offices to participate in the e-Forum on Google Groups. If you are already a Google user, you may sign in using your Gmail account and follow the usual instructions. If you do not have a Gmail account, you will be asked to create a new account for Gmail (e.g. xxx(at)gmail.com) to participate in this group.

The e-Forum is organized into six (6) sequential discussion modules, each devoted to one of the recommendations made by IOS in its final report, thus allowing for a more focused and detailed discussion.

For ease of reference, the recommendations are as follows:

•                                 i.            Clarify the role of National Commissions;
•                                ii.            Strengthen the coordination of the network of National Commissions;
•                              iii.            Strengthen National Commissions’ partnerships with civil society and the private sector;
•                              iv.            Enhance resource mobilization and be more strategic and focused in the use of limited resources;
•                               v.            Develop a mechanism to manage the knowledge generated by the network of National Commissions; and
•                              vi.            Strengthen the capacity development of National Commissions.

Two weeks (14 days) is dedicated to discuss the first recommendation given its broad nature and particular importance. Then a shorter period of time will be given to each of the other five recommendations taking into account the direction of the discussion on recommendation 1. Periodically, you will be sent an e-mail reminder about which recommendation item shall be up for discussion. Kindly note the e-Forum discussions will end by 10 January 2013 at the latest.

• Summary of the first meeting of the open-ended Tripartite Working Group held on 19 October at UNESCO Headquarters
• Document 190 EX/37 and Addendum

For more information, please contact the Section of National Commissions and Related Networks (Ms Sonia Zerroualy, tel.: +33.1.45.68.12.57, email: s.zerroualy(at)unesco.org)