The World Bank is now supporting and facilitating the establishment of the first community of practice in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in the area of employment and social safety nets. This community will provide a space where practitioners from MENA to share their operational experience, knowledge, and best practices on how best to improve delivery of social policy. One channel to improve the design and implementation of social programs is to foster south-south knowledge exchanges, which have proven to successfully contribute to reform of social programs and systems in other developing regions. These knowledge exchanges can take various formats
such as study tours, audio-conferences, workshops, and e-platforms. The first meeting was an attempt to gather an initial pool of practitioners in the region to define the topics to be discussed by community and to define the tools that will be employed to help and facilitate knowledge exchanges. A virtual network using the World Bank's collaboration for development platform helped practitioners stay in contact with each other, initiate discussions, ask questions, and share information on regional best practices.