African Regional Meeting on Community Conservation and Women2030 Media training

26 Feb 2018 to 27 Feb 2018
Nirobi, Kenya

The 1st African regional meeting of GFC members was held in Nairobi, Kenya, 26-27 February 2018. Some 60 people participated, including representatives of most of our 22 NGO and IPO members, and many of our Women2030 partners and other allied groups. We welcomed the participation of many community members; communities are aware that they have often been exploited and the meeting was an important step in rebuilding trust between civil society and communities.

Overall the meeting was an important opportunity for all, women and men, to contribute their skills, experiences and knowledge related to community conservation and empowering women in sustainable development policies. Groups in Africa that have already undertaken Community Conservation Resilience Initiative (CCRI) assessments include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana, DRC and South Africa, who were all invited to share their findings. Other important exchanges focused on media strategies, fundraising, and methods for advocacy. The meeting was a vibrant gathering, and came up with many proposals for future skill-sharing, capacity-building and collaborative advocacy, which will be shared in the report of the meeting due to be published soon. Many thanks go to Lucy Mulenkei and Edna Kaptoyo and their IIN colleagues who did a marvellous job hosting this meeting.

Back to back to with the African CCRI skillshare, we held the fourth and final Women2030 Media Training, this time for the African region, from 28 February to 2 March, in Nairobi. The goal of the meeting was to provide a regional platform for Women 2030 partners, interested groups and communities to participate in capacity building on outreach and advocacy and, again, to share their skills and experience with each other. The media training focused on improving our collective media strategies and methods for advocacy, looking at strategies and techniques relating to social media, mainstream media, and activist photography and videography. It was a very ‘hands on’ event, with participants spending much of their time crafting messages and drafting press releases, and then interviewing, photographing and videoing each other, and loading the results to social media. There was a particularly useful in-depth exchange about some of the legal and security implications relating to the use of digital technologies and visual media. For any questions or requests for clarifications, please contact Ronnie Hall at ronnie.hall@globalforestcoalition.org