LAO NIU Foundation supports Pendeba capacity building

From June 14 to 18, 2013, the Pendeba Society organized a five-day training on capacity building for local QNNP community leaders - the Pendebas. The training was held in the Pendeba Training Center in Tingri County. 10 village leaders and 10 women leaders from wetlands project-concerned villages participated in the training. In order to better conduct the training and ensure training results, we applied participatory method and open-ended forum, where participants could have free discussion and share experience and success stories with each other. 

This training has continued previous modules, aiming at promoting sustainable and participatory community development, and increasing village leaders’ capacity in ecological conservation, public health, proposal development, project monitoring and evaluation and HIV/AIDS prevention. Pendebas are mediators between the Society and communities, and also are implementers of the specific projects, representing the Pendeba Society in their respective communities. During the implementation phase and follow-up management, Pendebas are the catalysts that continuously help promote sustainable development in QNNP. 

The residents of QNNP are both protectors and stakeholders of the preserve. A better conserved QNNP cannot develop without active participation of local people. And they need to be familiar with the environment where they reside. Therefore, the Society has arranged a component to introduce QNNP in-depth to the training participants, and have them express their ideas on how to address issues and problems facing QNNP at present. The projects, implemented by the Society, such as sheep corral transformation, farmlands and wetlands conservation projects, have produced positive impact on reducing conflicts between natural resources conservation and community livelihoods development. Though traditional wetlands-block built sheep corrals are still prevailing, the Society has successfully mobilized local communities to transform traditional corrals into rock and stone-built ones. The transformed corrals are environmentally friendly and endurable. Villagers do not need repeated labor input for rebuilding/reinforcing the traditional ones. The projects have received support from local people and also attained the goal of environmental conservation. During the training, we took the projects as an entry point to explain and illustrate the importance of environmental conservation. By using actual cases and stories, it was easier for the participants to understand and raise their awareness of environmental conservation, which achieved a bottom-up conservation results.  

As the economy develops, migrant workers are increasing year by year, which increases the chances for them to get exposed to HIV/AIDS risks. Therefore, during the training, we also introduced knowledge about HIV/AIDS prevention. Most participants have little knowledge about HIV/AIDS. Two out of 20 participants have heard of HIV/AIDS prevention, and the others have never heard of the disease. It becomes significant to give introduction of HIV/AIDS prevention know-how to local villagers, and have them conduct relevant campaigns to educate more villagers about the disease. The participants discussed their strategies and steps to conduct such campaigns with the help of experts. At the end of the training, the participants have gained much knowledge about community health education and HIV/AIDS prevention. The expert also emphasized the significance of using social catalysts to address social issues, which shows the important role of social organizations in HIV/AIDS prevention and environmental conservation. 

During the training, the participants also discussed environmental problems facing QNNP at present, and they have paid great attention to QNNP’s environment. Villages also took actions in trash cleaning. Some villages even provided incentives for trash cleaning. In the meantime, participants also expressed their concerns about construction groups from outside who did not care about the environment. After the construction, a lot of construction trash was left without being well disposed of. In some villages, wetlands conservation also matters a lot, in particular trash cleaning in the wetlands. The participants have good awareness of environmental governance and they understood that many diseases had direct connection with local environmental conditions.  

The last component of the training was to help participants come up with a detailed plan for community development. Tsering Norbu, Executive Director of the Pendeba Society, introduced the steps and key points in developing a project proposal. Participants were grouped to develop their village development action plans consisted of community environmental health and wetlands conservation projects. After the training, the participants also did an evaluation of the training, and the feedback was quit positive provided that the training was rich in contents and covered many important and pragmatic aspects of community development. The contents of the training were easy and clear, and participants were well accommodated through the training. Finally, the participants expressed their satisfaction and gratitude to the training organizer and sponsors.