The World Bank is now supporting andfacilitating the establishment of the first community ofpractice in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regionin the area of employment and social safety nets. Thiscommunity will provide a space where practitioners from MENAto share their operational experience, knowledge, and bestpractices on how best to improve delivery of social policy.One channel to improve the design and implementation ofsocial programs is to foster south-south knowledgeexchanges, which have proven to successfully contribute toreform of social programs and systems in other developingregions. These knowledge exchanges can take various formats;such as study tours, audio-conferences, workshops, ande-platforms. The first meeting was an attempt to gather aninitial pool of practitioners in the region to define thetopics to be discussed by community and to define the toolsthat will be employed to help and facilitate knowledgeexchanges. A virtual network using the World Bank'scollaboration for development platform helped practitionersstay in contact with each other, initiate discussions, askquestions, and share information on regional best practices.