The innovative nature of social funds, their contributions to poverty reduction, their wide- spread recognition as well as controversy surrounding them in developing countries and within the development community, all called for a global exchange of experiences and lessons learned. The Economic Development Institute (EDI) of the World Bank, after facilitating some regional exchanges among social funds’ managers in Latin America and Africa, identified the need for a global learning event in 1995 and initiated the preparation of the workshop in early 1996
