It is estimated that nearly half a million local elected officials and other community leaders on six continents have been involved using the initial version of UN-HABITAT's Local Elected Leadership (LEL) Series. Because this new series has been vastly improved, based on the feedback of literally thousands of trainers and workshop participants, these trainers and those who they train will be able to further their effectiveness as learning facilitators.

This new series incorporates all the major lessons learned and the substantial changes that have taken place in the roles and responsibilities of local governments and their leaders in the past decade. It also incorporates the training and capacity building experiences of users from Eastern and Western Europe, Central Asia, East and West Africa, the Arab States, Latin America and South Asia.

Maintaining all the key aspects of the original, this new edition has been substantially expanded and updated, bringing in gender and governance. By emphasizing the governance norms and principles as underlying values shaping leadership roles and qualities, it methodically links the technical competencies and skills to broader governance imperatives.

This new series introduces Representation and Leadership as key roles of local elected officials. Representation is the legal mandate of the office you have been elected to serve. Leadership is the sum total of your contributions as an elected official to the common good of the community during your time in office, and beyond. The "beyond" timeframe of your leadership contribution is your legacy. The series thus begins with representation and ends with leadership.

In between the representation and leadership roles are 10 supporting competencies to be an effective elected leader: Communicating, Facilitating, Using Power, Decision-Making, Policy-Making, Enabling, Negotiating, Financing, Overseeing and Institution Building. These ten competencies are critical for effectively discharging the two key roles.

The LEL series consists of four volumes. The new series is packaged in four parts —a "Quick Guide", —a "User Guide", "Concepts and Strategies" and "Training Governance Tools". By combining the previously separate handbooks on concepts into one book and likewise the training tools into one integrated work, the new series has been made more compact and attractive.

The first volume in the series, the Quick Guide, provides a snap-shot of the content of each of the manuals. It was published in April 2005 and is now available.