This session will challenge participants to take a good hard look at the various forces at work in the larger environment in which training institutions have to operate. Participants will be introduced to various realities of the changing environment, which will affect the sustainability and financial viability of training institutions.

The session provides an opportunity for participants to examine the implications of the changing environment on training institutions and to consider various options or strategies on how to mitigate the “problems” or “threats” faced by training programs and institutions. A holistic conceptual framework for developing strategies for improving the competitiveness of training institutions will be proposed. Innovative approaches and specific strategies in qualitative improvement of learning processes & methods, interactive technology applications, distance learning, niche marketing, as well as customer care and personalized client service will be introduced.

In this session, participants will work in peer learning groups (6-8 participants per group) to identify, review and assess the innovative features and strengths, as well as weaknesses of training strategies of the World Bank’s Knowledge Utilization through Learning Technologies (KULT) Program workshops. Participants will identify and assess the effectiveness and usefulness of various features KULT workshops’ institution-building strategies to facilitate program sustainability and financial viability. Prior to the workshop, participants will be requested to visit and review at least three KULT workshops’ websites and other marketing materials (brochures, etc.) to identify best practices in facilitating training institutions program sustainability and financial health.

Based on the results of discussion during the previous sessions, participants will work again in their Peer Learning Group (PLG) to prepare a Group Report’s Lessons Learned, summarizing up to 6 (six) most useful and innovative aspects/features of the KULT workshops’ strategies, and 3 (three) weaknesses or needed improvements of such efforts, and the reasons for their strengths as well as weaknesses.

Each PLG will report during this Plenary Session the group consensus generated during the previous three sessions on the generic lessons learned from the KULT workshops’ strategies and approaches. Based on comments and suggestions from their peers during the previous four sessions, participants will then write up the summary of their specific lessons learned into their daily “Workshop Journal”