Dear APRN Members,

Greetings from the Secretariat!

If you may recall in the General Council meeting of 2006, a decision had been made that APRN would embark on work along different streams, i.e. natural resources, labor, public services, women, and trade/bilaterals. Members have signed up for the different streams and have met during the year to plan on researches and other collaborative activities.

At the last Board of Convenors meeting, there was a discussion on the responsibility of BOC members over the stream, as well as the level of work and resources available to get the work off the ground. There was a clarification that the BOC member assigned as stream coordinators exercised leadership in the discussions among the stream members. This, however, is different from the programmatic leadership that should come from the Secretariat.

The Secretariat has been quite unsuccessful in getting a coordinator to drive the work of the streams forward. And the BOC members, with a sense of responsibility over the streams, have taken to the programmatic aspects of the work.

The Secretariat is taking steps to address this issue of resource-constraint. Once this is resolved, the work of the program streams in between planning and other meetings may now proceed from the Secretariat.

We would also like to inform you that at the moment, there are a number of stream activities identified for the year:

The Secretariat would be working closely with the different streams on the particulars/details for the stream activities.

The Secretariat hopes that this update on the state of the program streams will keep the members up to speed on the developments and plans over the coming months.

We look forward to hearing your feedback, as we all try to get our collaborative work on the different streams going. Thank you very much.

For the Secretariat,

Ma. Theresa Nera-Lauron

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