Story from Anne Ntongho, WWF.
In our January edition of CCNet News we shared a story about the Open Standards workshops financed by the USFWS within its MENTOR Fellow program, a professional development program for young conservation practitioners in Central Africa.
This time several MENTOR Fellows share their gratitude for what they learned and tell us how it is helping advance their careers and their conservation work to protect pangolins and chimpanzees.
“The Adaptive Management training has been a great positive addition to my professional life. We used Adaptive Management to develop and implement our projects during the MENTOR-POP (Progress on Pangolins) Fellowship Program. During our project implementation some things did not quite work out as planned and we had to change a few things and adapt to situations on the ground. Now as we try to fundraise for new projects, we are using the knowledge and skills from Adaptive Management to develop and submit project proposals to funding agencies. The Adaptive Management training has given me the courage to try new things, learn from past experience and mistakes to improve on future projects”. Ichu Ichu Godwill, MENTOR-POP Program
“Our proposal on “assessing pangolin population in Tayna Reserve (DRC)” submitted to Mohamed Bin Zayed Species Conservation has been successful because of skills acquired from Adaptive Management training”. Jonas Kambale Nyumu, MENTOR-POP Program
“Since I was introduced to the Open Standards at the Adaptive Management training during MENTOR–PACE (Mentoring for the Protection of Apes and Conservation of Ecosystem) program, I became more self-confident, which is helping me overcome arising situations in life, at work and during project management and implementation through adaptation and mitigation measures. In my home organization WCF (Wild Chimpanzee Foundation) Liberia, the knowledge and application of adaptive management has been a very strong working tool for team building and for developing good relationships with other staff members and even with the local communities we work with. This approach is a new foundation that is helping us successfully manage work related issues that could otherwise break us apart.” Parker Kerkula Jimmy. MENTOR- PACE Program
“Adaptive Management has been one of the most important trainings to me till date. The most important achievement for me so far has been the review of a proposal from IUCN, Environmental Radio. With my knowledge in Adaptive Management, it was quite easy for me to identify the gaps therein. The reasoning that goes into putting out ideas in the conceptual model makes for a logical and systematic flow in developing the full project. With this base in Adaptive Management I’m positive to attain my goal in conservation project development”. Euphemia Fosab, MENTOR-POP Program
“The Open Standards Course for adaptive management was one of the major highlights for me of the MENTOR-POP (Progress on Pangolins) Program. I got to understand how projects are designed, implemented and managed. This was new to me given that in other places where I have worked before, I just found myself as part of a team carrying out an already designed project without knowing anything about how much work goes into designing a successful project. The open discussions we had during this training helped my action group review our goals, objectives and activities. Working on conceptual models and result chains was very interesting since we saw our ideas falling into place in a systematic way. The learning of the “MIRADI” software was also a good experience. I believe with the skills I have gained, I stand a greater chance of receiving funding.” Esua Etogekwe, MENTOR-POP Program
“The Adaptive management approach has been very useful to us in designing projects that were sent to USFWS for funding.” Nebaneh Samuel, MENTOR-POP Program.
Click here if you want to learn more about the MENTOR-POP (Progress on Pangolins) Program.
