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The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) was established in 1965 as an autonomous body within the United Nations with the purpose of enhancing the effectiveness of the Organization through appropriate training and research. UNITAR’s mission is to deliver innovative training and conduct research on knowledge systems to develop the capacity of beneficiaries. To concretize this mission UNITAR implements various training activities in the field of sustainable development, supporting countries, particularly those in development process, to enhance the capacity of their civil servants.

The training terminology was developed with the purpose of harmonizing and standardizing the terms used in UNITAR's training activities. This request was expressed by the Training Methodology working group on occasion of the consultation process of April 2007 and included in the Strategic Reform Plan 2007-09. The advantages of such a standardization are the improvement of the clarity of the information and a reduction of its ambiguity. It can also help in harmonizing the communication within the organization.

UNITAR's training terminology has not been developed as a novelty work. In most of the cases it is a research compilation of definitions already available in a number of websites, articles, books and various other sources available on-line, with all the sources being acknowledged.

The Table of Content is the main section of the Terminology and it's accessible from the menu on the left of the screen. This section is organized in four subsection: the General Terminology, the E-Learning Terminology, the Knowledge Management Terminology and the Toolkits.

In the General Terminology you can find all the terms that have been defined in the web-site. Every term that appears in the list in an active link to its correspondent definition.

The E-Learning and the Knowledge-Management Terminologies are compilation of terms related with specialized subjects. Users only interested in these specific field can refer directly to them. It's important to remember that all the terms listed here are also included in the General Terminology.

The Toolkits section is the most powerful part fo the web-site. The terms that appear in this list are methodologies for which it was created an "How to do" guide (General Guidelines or Step-by Step) that permits to the users to put this tools in practice. The guide also contains, when useful, practical tips and indications for the facilitator. For all of this terms you will find a pdf version that permits you to download the guide and to print it in a better format, and for some of them you will also be able to download templates ready to use.

To help you navigating in the web-site we have associated different icons to the various tools you are going to find: corresponds to the definiton of a term. You will find it for every term that is listed in the different terminologies. is the icon of the toolkits. You will find it for every term that is listed in the Toolkit section. When you see this icons you will find a guide to use the methodology that is indicated.

In the tollkits section there are other two icons that you will find:

associated with the templates that we prepared for the use of the methodologies.

associated with the guide in a pdf format so that you can download and print it.

refers to additional resources given for a term. Here you will find more useful information, examples, or other indication. There are two icons that you are going to find in the Bibliography:

indicates the page where you can find all the books and articles that have been used to compile the definitions.

indicates the list of the web-sites consulted.