This week I am in Nairobi – Kenya. The BIOPAMA Project, through the financial assistance of the EU funds, has sponsored 10 participants from the Pacific to attend the knowledge-sharing workshop from the BIOPAMA and BEST 2.0 Projects implemented by IUCN in the African, Caribbean and Pacific. The workshop is held at the Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club in the serene Ridgeways area in Nairobi. Unexpectedly, the weather has been cold and gloomy in the last few days. Still, the spirit and excitement for the journey are high among the 55 participants across the region, including protected area management leaders, biodiversity conservation managers, practitioners of protected areas, rangers, park managers, project staff, etc.

On the first day of the workshop, we had the opportunity to understand the methodology of the unique ‘knowledge-sharing journey’ workshop designed to share experiences and solutions developed, implemented and documented in the specific countries within the regions. From the Pacific, I have brought our Grantees under the BIOPAMA Project from Kiribati, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Palau, Fiji and Samoa, who are in a mix of government and non-government organizations. We call our grant recipients ‘grantees’ who receive funds from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) through a head agreement between IUCN and the EU. (Photos: IUCN)

The facilitator for the workshop, Maria Fernanda Arraes ran a detailed opening session on the knowledge-sharing journey, the objectives and the way activities have been crafted to produce tangible benefits from the week-long engagement of the grantees to capitalize on the lessons learned here in Nairobi. According to her, ‘the workshop will provide opportunities for the participants to share and exchange their experiences with each other with the idea of the capitalizing on individuals and organizations experience, identify practices that can be scaled up, describe and analyze them in detail, and share the learnings that they derive from it.

Late in the afternoon, we recorded video testimonials of the grantees from the Pacific. These videos will be used for future regional communication and awareness work. From tomorrow, the participants can share their stories and write up their unique solutions using the Panoroma Solutions template.