The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA, 31 January 2007, Presentation to World Bank Staff, Learning for Development: The Work of the Commonwealth of Learning, Sir John Daniel & Professor Mohan Menon, Commonwealth of Learning // It is a pleasure to be here and to return the visit that Jamil Salmi and Rick Hopper made to COL last fall. It is good to be at the Bank again with friends that I worked with when I was at UNESCO. Thank you for this opportunity to talk to you about the work that the Commonwealth of Learning. // I shall present COL in a general fashion and then my colleague Mohan Menon, Team Leader of our Education Sector, will focus specifically on Teacher Development and Open Schooling, two areas that Jamil and Rick thought might resonate well with some of your concerns. He will try to relate COL's work in these two fields to your own interest and suggest potentially productive areas for collaboration. // I shall start with some background on COL before explaining the thinking behind our Three-Year Plan for 2006-09, called simply Learning for Development. This Plan was endorsed by Commonwealth Ministers of Education at their Conference in Cape Town in December. The Plan gives the overall framework of our programme for the Commonwealth as a whole. It is made operational through 49 Country Action Plans which we have finalised since the Ministers' Conference and will present to our Executive Committee in London on Friday.