During the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage Congress at Casablanca, Morocco in September of 1987 Worth Fitzgerald of A.I.D. and Peter Sun of the Economic Development Institute (World Bank) invited a number of people to discuss the prospect of holding a "Workshop on Training Needs and Strategies for Irrigated Agriculture Development". This exploratory meeting was called because of a long-shared view of A.I.D. and the Bank that training must be an integral part of any effort to improve irrigation performance and the realization that results have in many cases been unsatisfactory. Despite significant investments in training in many projects, most countries and external financing agencies do not have a systematic way of assessing staff development needs or of developing effective training strategies.