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The Regional Seminar as a Learning Event

International conferences provide opportunities for learning, but experience shows that unless well planned and managed, the learning opportunities are not often fully realized. The Regional Seminar and Learning Event on Local Governance and Pro-Poor Service Delivery made a concerted effort to mainstream learning through explicit measures, some of which had not been undertaken before. The starting point was to communicate the right message by including "learning event" in the program title to highlight the distinctive emphasis on learning.

Although our initial objective was to have a learning event for developing member countries (DMCs), it turned out that we really had four types of learner groups. The first and priority group comprised participants who were carefully selected by their governments to benefit from the seminar. The second group was the DMC government and civil society representatives who had volunteered to share their experiences and lessons learned in improving services for the poor. Most members of this group comprised persons who had never made a presentation to an international audience before. The third group was the event sponsors - ADB, ADBI, and UNCDF - who had sponsored many seminars before but wanted to do something different to create a good enabling environment for learning and knowledge sharing. The last group was the event organizers comprising the project team, facilitators, and moderators. The regional seminar sought to optimize learning opportunities for all learner groups.

The starting point in the planning was concerned with the development of case material and presentations. All presenters were obliged to identify 3 - 5 learning points concerning their presentations and associated case studies and these were tested through several interactive preparatory sessions. Consequently, presentations without credible learning points were filtered out at an early stage.

Another initiative that helped the presenters was the allocation of dedicated persons to assist with quality assurance, rehearsals, and team building. This investment paid off in two ways: it built capacity and capability among the seminar presenters, and greatly strengthened the quality and focus of the seminar.

The seminar was planned with an introductory session that included a presentation setting out the objectives of the learning event and the framework for identifying capturing and providing feedback on the quality of the learning.

There were two types of learning opportunities: firstly through the presentations (and case studies); and secondly, through subject-specific group learning activity on each day. The group learning activities were sessions designed specifically for the participants to unpack the complexity of a particular facet of service delivery and be given the opportunity to learn about benchmarking and continuous improvement techniques, improving service delivery in the rural areas, and strengthening citizens' voice and building/maintaining effective citizen-government partnerships.

A facility for maintaining learning diaries was put in place to enable self-reflection at the end of each session and to capture participants' views on what they may have learned.

A simple checklist of six questions was developed and used for the learning diary. The checklist was easily understood and filled up by the participants, who were predominantly non-native English speakers. A group consisting of volunteer participants and facilitators/moderators processed the learning diaries at the end of the day and displayed on learning boards.

The learning boards facilitated the daily review on what the key learning points were and served as one of the bridges to link the previous day's sessions with the sessions to unfold in the following day. The learning board presentations were likewise helpful in interactively engaging the participants and making them more involved in processing the seminar proceedings. Learning boards were prepared for all the presentations including the three group learning activities. The boards were posted on the walls of the conference hall for participants to freely see and monitor the evolution of the learning process. The learning diaries supported by learning boards created a great deal of interest and sparked interest for replication.

The seminar also provided an opportunity for information exchange through networking among seminar participants. The concluding event comprised a visit to Makati City government where participants could hear firsthand from the mayor and other city officials on their successes in improving basic services particularly to the poor and vulnerable.

For the organizers and facilitators/moderators, the event gave them opportunities to share and learn experiences on how conferences can be more effectively designed and managed. The seminar facilitators/moderators were volunteer academics and trainers from distinguished educational and training institutions in the Philippines. Organizing and managing the learning event entailed enormous tasks and challenges.