Training Sierra Leone’s future national park staff
The Gola Forest is Sierra Leone’s biggest protected area, yet we have limited experience in Sierra Leone of managing protected areas on a scale as big as the Gola forest! The Gola Programme is therefore building the country's core of protected area managers – our future national park leaders!
Trainees in the forest - Jeremy Lindsell/RSPB
This unit was designed to support the senior management of the Gola Forest Programme to assess and develop the capacities of all staff, partners and community members to achieve the conservation and socio-economic goals of the Programme.
This will be achieved through developing and implementing training programmes, manuals and other resources - thus establishing the foundation of future protected area management staff for the future. The Unit has the following objectives:
- Ensure that all new recruits are contributing fully and enthusiastically as soon as possible after their engagement.
- Identify staff training needs in line with project goals and available resources, and develop relevant training opportunities.
- Present training and where appropriate, work with external training expertise to design tailor made training programmes for specialist groups of staff where required.
Key Achievement/results so far:
Successes of the Unit include 3 day induction training of 80 Programme staff. The Unit also facilitated a successful 6 weeks Forest Guard training event for 40 forest guards led by international experts, greatly enhancing the capacity of the Forestry Department in Sierra Leone. A range of training opportunities have also been given to programme staff, local government staff and community members is areas from computer use, motorcycle maintenance, project management, community tourist guards and mechanic training.
A range of opportunities are also available for staff and university students from visiting biologists with a diverse range of expertise including butterfly, bird, amphibian/reptile and chimpanzee survey techniques and primate habituation.
The programme also takes opportunities to send staff on international conferences and training courses wherever practical and staff have thus far travelled to Kenya, USA, Ivory Coast and the UK.
