Short course on Competing Claims for land, water and other natural resources - CDI, 27 Feb to 10 March 2017

This two weeks course is part of a series of courses offered by the Centre for Development and Innovation (CDI), Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands. Around 17 participants from Africa and Asia attended this course. The team shared experience on their work on natural resources management (NRM), and were able to acquire practical skills to scan landscapes, examine different conflict management approaches and apply them to case studies, and finally skills to manage conflicts and facilitate negotiation processes.

I attended this course as an NRM person when I was still teaching at the former Kitabi College of Conservation and Environmental Management (KCCEM), now called IPRC Kitabi.

My application for admission was successful and luckily also the scholarship from the Netherlands Fellowship Programme - nuffic (now called Orange Knowledge Programme), was secured.

Trainers of this course are impressive: (1) Cora van Oosten where she focuses on landscape approaches and institutional arrangements. (2) Rozemeijer Nico taking us through the concept of paradigm shifts, stakeholder analysis: power and interests; (3) Ilse Hennemann practically made us understand how to sketch the landscapes and go through the problem analysis; (4) Femke Gordijn was unique since her topics were covering social science aspects: principles of negotiation, facilitation and resolving conflicts on competing natural resources.

I am using these skills and knowledge during training, especially documentation on energisers, facilitation are very useful when your work involves dealing with communities or building capacity. You can also find all kinds of materials about multi-stakeholder processes here. Kindly also have a look at our video on the role play on You Tube.

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Training on project development, proposal writing and fundraising: 2-8 October 2018 - organized and delivered by Fauna and Flora International

This one week workshop was prepared by Fauna and Flora International (FFI), with the support from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF). This was a third training of this kind, and took place in Rwanda. A total of 15 participants attended this workshop, representing conservation practitioners, project managers, directors of civil society organisations from Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We covered different topics on project development, writing successful projects, keeping good relationships with the donor and tips for implementing projects. Trainers also took us through practice, every trainee using his own project idea, and make steps from the problem tree to the logical framework. It was a very good opportunity to have a network of project managers in East Africa, as well as donors who were represented: National Geographic and CEPF. We are now all part of the CLP alumni, and from there we can have access to a range of opportunities, including grants and training/fellowship. Out of the training room, we had one day excursion in areas very close to the Volcanoes National Park, to explore some community projects.

After the training, FFI continues to follow up with our progress, and sharing grants opportunities. The team at FFI (Merodie and Stuart) also kept on reviewing our project proposals, before we submit. I had a chance to get their review and my submitted project at National Geographic was successful.

Furthermore, since there were only 3 workshops of this kind in Africa (by FFI, funded by CEPF), each trainee was to also train more people on the same subject: using the same training material. This would allow the FFI to evaluate the impacts of their training, if trained people train others, and there are submitted projects and get funding.

With the assistance of other FFI trainees, I organised training for two groups of students: (1) at the University of Rwanda (UR) and (2) at the former Kitabi College of Conservation and Environmental Management (KCCEM). At UR, we collaborated with the department of Biology and the Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management (CoEB). I was assisted by Methode and Josué Aruna, also colleagues who attended the FFI workshop. In total, approximately 40 students were trained at UR (year 3 and 4 Biology) and 100 students (level 1 and 2) trained at KCCEM. At KCCEM, support from Yvette and Délu was helpful. These were two days training, fully packed, but we shared with the students possible material for their further exploration. Both training were fully funded by the National Geographic Society, East Africa Fund. Nat Geo representative, Chloé Cipolletta was joining at the training, encouraging students to apply for ''early career'' grants and sharing tips to develop a good proposal. We hope the training helped the students to develop their conservation career and be able to draft proposals in their future.

Teaching at Kitabi College of Conservation and Environmental Management (KCCEM), now the IPRC Kitabi

KCCEM was established in 2006 by the Rwanda Development Board, as a training hub, to build capacity in environmental management and tourism. The College is now under Rwanda Polytechnics and has three departments (wildlife management, wildlife tourism and forest resource management) and students undertake two years to be awarded a diploma certificate. I was a lecturer at Kitabi since September 2016 to July 2017. I was giving 7 courses: (1) Introduction to Global Systems - level one wildlife management, (2) Human impacts on the environment - level one wildlife management, (3) Introduction to statistics - level one wildlife management, (4) Participatory natural resource management - level two wildlife management, (5) Climate change and disaster risk management - level two wildlife management, (6) Intro to climatology and climate change - level one forest resources, and (7) Forest ecosystems and ecological restoration - level one forest resources.

The 10 months that I spent at Kitabi, was an experience to stay in a remote and cold area, meet a variety of visitors coming to Nyungwe and passing by the school - exchange with our students. From time to time, we had to adapt at conditions of cooking by ourselves, shopping on rural markets and having baboons taking away your food! The college has some connections, and opportunities to get support for few students, and for the staff's personal development. I still remember the cold nights, but a morning fresh air from the forest :). I cannot forget the weekly jogging by all staff, followed by some debriefing by the senior management team.