Learning, Sharing and Inspiring – our Asia-Pacific Forestry Week Experience

What do you usually do after attending a conference? Most of us would just be back in our daily routine of doing studies or work. But when you are given a once in lifetime opportunity, somehow you just feel that urge to share it to others. This is exactly what we felt after having been given a handful of opportunities to attend various youth capacity-building workshops during the Forest Asia Summit (2014), Youth Session at the Global Landscape Forum (2014) and the Youth in Landscapes Initiative at the Global Landscape Forum (2015). Both of us were doing our graduate studies while working when we had the chance to participate in the mentioned conferences. One very striking feature among these conferences was the emphasis it gave on providing specific session for the youth and complementing it with various master classes for building and enhancing the youth’s leadership skills.

Jan Joseph moderated a youth session on ensuring food security in the Southeast Asia region during the Forests Asia Summit while Karen facilitated a youth session on climate change and land-use during the Global Landscapes Forum 2014 and became one of the pitchers during the Dragon’s Den Session at the Youth in Landscapes Initiative in 2015.

Left: Moderating a discussion at the Forests Asia Summit 2014 © CIFOR Right: Pitching the “Measuring Success” team’s idea during YIL’s Youth Session © Andrew Wheeler for Wild Dog Limited/WLE_CGIAR 2015

We were able to perform our respective roles during these events mainly because of the various master classes that we’ve been through prior to the conferences. In these master classes we’re not only taught on how to be a moderators, facilitators or pitchers, they taught us things that one can only learn from experience and mostly the university does not explicitly teach these things. This was one of the main reasons why we felt compelled to conduct the re-echo of these master classes. We want students and young professionals to be able to acquire the so-called “soft-skills” that are very hard to come by using the conventional and often technical system we have.  The timing of one of FAO’s regional forestry event called the 3^rd Asia-Pacific Forestry Week was just prefect and we did not let this opportunity pass by. We took advantage of this regional event to reach out to the youth delegates and conducted the re-echo of the master classes.

Participants during the pitching session

One of the main challenge though that we faced is the limited time we had to conduct the re-echo of the master class. A one-day event to transfer all of the things we learned from the previous master classes we attended was not enough and so we’re planning on conducting a series of follow-up workshops to fully transfer all the knowledge we gained from the master class to the next generation of landscape leaders within the region.

Participants during the re-echo of the capacity-building workshop at the 3^rd Asia-Pacific Forestry Week © Beth Zaida Hernandez of the AFFS-UPLB Inc. Local Committee (IFSA)

This re-echo workshop is just the start of the many capacity-building workshops and trainings we hope to conduct not only in the country but also within the Asia Pacific region. As young professionals comprising a third of the workforce in the forestry and environment sectors, we have a lot to contribute and we can only do this successfully if we lend a helping hand to each other. Let’s take this initiative and provide other young people the necessary leadership skills for them to effectively contribute on addressing our environmental and landscape problems. We’re calling on other young people to collaborate with us to foster and empower other young people on becoming our future leaders.

Blogpost by Karen Verdiano and Jan Joseph