Partners’ Community Liaison Officers formed a “Coalition of Change”

Written by: Dimakatso Nonyane

On the 5^th of December 2019 the K2C team and the WWF Khetha hosted an adventurous fun filled day for the Community Liaison Officers and the Environmental Monitors Managers in the Kruger landscape.

The purpose of the workshop was to build a common vision for Natural Resource Management in communities adjacent to the Protected Area System and to develop a coalition for change around the key messages of inspiring a better future by connecting to our natural resources, building a sense of belonging and to empower.

18 participants who are based in different locations around the landscape attended the workshop and discovered collaboratively how they could better engage with their communities in order to build sustainable and successful projects using a method called “The Wayfinder”.

Wayfinder is a process guide for resilience assessment, collaborative planning and action in social-ecological systems. It represents the frontier in resilience and sustainability science, synthesized into a clear, coherent and hands-on approach to navigate towards sustainable, just and safe futures.

The Wayfinder methodology contains different tools to assist in project design. These methods help participants think out of the box and engage a lot with the communities and it also assist in knowing who the relevant stakeholders are to collaborate with in order to make a collective impact. 

“I believe that if we come together and work towards a common future by protecting the Environment and all its resources, we are building a legacy for future generations”, Vusi Tshabalala, K2C EM Project Manager said. “That can only start with us engaging, influencing and giving feedback to our respective communities.”

“It was an eye-opening workshop, very engaging as we participate in different activities that makes you think of aspects of your project that is neglected such as ensuring inputs from and feedback to the communities” Kulani from EWT said.

A big thank you to the WWF Khetha for sharing this game-changing empowerment tool with us so that we could make and track a collective impact when combatting environmental degradation and work collaboratively towards just and safe futures!