Having started with one specific question (how to monitor and evaluate the utility of CIARIS for the different actors involved in the fight against social exclusion at local level), the subsequent discussion in the group ended by addressing other topics.

Here are the five resulting recommendations:

1. Create a database with a profile of all users of CIARIS.

This database should take in account, namely, the academic background, the specific knowledge needs, and specific knowledge capacities of CIARIS users. This would permit not only not to loose contact with the actors that in one moment or the other in one way or another have had contact with CIARIS, but also make possible a more tailored, and therefore useful and effective, response of CIARIS to it’s users. Additionally, with this kind of tool CIARIS could play a more active role facilitating the establishment of connections between users.

2. Create thematic spaces in CIARIS Community to promote the exchange of experiences.

This recommendation derives from the feeling of a certain maladjustment of CIARIS Community structure and the interests of it’s users. They feel that the existence of certain topics (e.g. a space for addressing the questions of children and youth) would make the space more useful and, therefore, compel them to use it more often.

3. Existence of summaries of the forums discussions.

On one hand, this summaries would turn more effective the communication with CIARIS users giving them the essential picture of discussion made, something particular relevant for those who did not participate in the discussions. On the other hand, they would objectify a learning output on which future discussions could rely, assuming, in that sense, an important role in a continuous process of capacity building of CIARIS users.

In addition to this, the existence of summaries would give a more concrete form to a mode of knowledge more embedded in the diverse contexts of the actors fighting against social exclusion, giving CIARIS a more bottom-up approach in terms of available contents.

These summaries could be part or mentioned in a newsletter that would update CIARIS activities. Preferably they should be available in at least two languages.

4. Existence of ‘moderator(s)’ for the promotion of CIARIS.

It would be important that CIARIS (namely CIARIS Community) would have one or more persons that could give more life to the space not only in terms of updating it, but also in terms of engraciating it’s users (welcoming them, giving them support, building bridges between them), and in fostering the communication (elaborating newsletters, making translations, sending mails, etc.). The use of the word ‘moderator’ derived from the fact that the role of this persons could be not only one of facilitating but also of ‘posing knowledge challenges’ that could foster users learning process.

This figure could assumed not only by the ‘central’ CIARIS but also by the actors from the local contexts.

5. All members of the community should be disseminators of CIARIS.