 Greetings to everyone at the Commonwealth Symposium on Education from the Commonwealth of Learning or CALL in Vancouver. It is an honour to be virtually present to give you CALL's perspective on Open Education Resources or OER. As you know, CALL believes that knowledge is the Commonwealth of humankind and that all educational content developed with public funds must be made available under open licenses so that more people are able to benefit from the initial investment. As such, CALL has taken several concrete steps to promote OER. In fact, CALL was promoting the development of OER in the 90s with its Stamp 2000 Plus teacher training materials well before the term OER was first coined at a UNESCO workshop in 2002. More recently, CALL became one of the first intergovernmental organisations to declare its commitment to OER through the development of an OER policy. So why is CALL interested in promoting OER? The purpose of CALL, as stated in its MOU or Memorandum of Understanding, is, and I quote, to widen access to opportunities for learning, unquote, and to assist, and I quote again, the acquisition and delivery of teaching materials and more generally facilitate access to them and commission and promote the adaptation and development of teaching materials. This was a visionary idea in the 1980s and 90s, but is now beginning to bear fruit as OER. As you know, CALL is leading several initiatives to promote the development and use of OER. 32 member states of the Commonwealth are engaged, very actively I must say, in developing OER under CALL's Virtual University of the Small States of the Commonwealth Initiative. Needs-based courses on disaster management, tourism, entrepreneurship, fisheries, etc., have been completed and are available on CALL's website. CALL is also supporting the teacher education in Sub-Saharan Africa or TESA consortium, another partnership of 13 African countries for developing and deploying teacher training materials. However, CALL recognizes that OER needs to be promoted not just for higher education or tertiary education, but for schools as well. To a six-country partnership, CALL has developed 20 sets of course materials in print and online formats based on the secondary curricula of Botswana, Lesotho, Nabibia, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago and Zambia. This has established communities of practice and helped teachers and institutions save time and money by collaborating on the content development across different countries and cultures. This long engagement with OER gives CALL a perspective about the inherent challenges and the emerging opportunities. We believe that the OER movement is a people's movement founded on the principles of openness, sharing and collaboration. This is very much in keeping with the spirit of the 2012 Paris OER Declaration that was adopted by the global community at the World OER Congress organized jointly by UNESCO Paris and CALL with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Paris Declaration makes 10 recommendations. Let me just refer to three key ones. The first is reinforce the development of strategies and policies on OER. The second, encourage the development and adaptation of OER in a variety of languages and cultural contexts. And the third I wish to refer to relates to encouraging the open licensing of educational materials produced with public funds. This declaration is an important development as governments tend to take such internationally agreed documents quite seriously. OER also featured in the communique issued by the Commonwealth Education Ministers when they met for the triennial conference in Mauritius in August 2012. Ministers recommend that, and I quote, a common platform for OER materials be set up for ease of access and that the development and use of OER in providing quality teaching and learning for all be promoted, unquote. This again is an influential document that gets the attention of policymakers across the 54 Commonwealth member states. What will CALL do to take these recommendations forward? CALL will continue its partnership with UNESCO and other like-minded organizations to focus on four areas. One, advocacy and awareness generation regarding the benefits and availability of OER. Two, policy development on OER at the national and institutional levels. Three, capacity building so that more governments, institutions and individuals are able to harness the potential of OER. And four, promote research through its publications on OER and its chairs program. CALL's website has one of the most comprehensive repositories of materials and resources on OER anywhere in the world and I invite you to visit us at www.col.org. In conclusion, let me say that the OER movement has the potential to enhance access to quality education at low costs. Let us build our capacities so that we can take full advantage of this opportunity. Let me wish you all a very memorable symposium. Thank you.