19 Jul Building Local Capacity to Ensure Effective MPA Management

To foster the development of MPA in Buano, CTC conducted a three-day training on the principles of marine protected area (MPA) for community in Buano. The aims of this training are to raise awareness on the concept of MPA for biodiversity, fisheries and tourism, to learn logical thinking on the benefit and mechanism for an MPA to function, to increase knowledge on step by step process in establishing and managing an MPA, to inspire for ideas and getting commitment for local community involvement as well as to raise input from all stakeholder on MPA establishment process for Governor Declare at provincial level. Finally, the expected result from the training will be greater understanding from the community on the importance of establishing MPA, which in turns will trigger a strong commitment and participant of the community for MPA establishment and management process in Buano.

The training utilized adult learning and participatory methods, delivered by using power point, flipcharts, discussion, exercises using some game activities e.g. fishing and ecology game, as well as photos and videos. To assess progress of each participant, pretest and posttest as well additional quiz were given to the participants. Three trainers from CTC and one additional lecturer from Pattimura University delivered the training.

The participants consisted of one or two representatives of the six villages in South and North Buano (four villages from North Buano and two villages in South Buano). They were mostly village leaders, “tokoh masyarakat”, “tokoh perempuan”, as well as “wakil pemuda desa”. Additionally, there were in total five participants from Fisheries and Marine Department, Pattimura University and LPPM.  It is important to underline that the participants pointed out that through CTC’s efforts in the past year, they are now actively involved in marine conservation and confidently telling the stories about how important their marine environment is to the community.