So Winter School 2012 has come and gone and at the same time I’ve been asked to write an entry for the blog this week. Ideally I guess I could write and reflect on this year’s course. So I’ll make this a very short blog….it was great!
Alright, alright here’s a little bit more. Four years ago I returned to CSAG, after a year off, to help run the first Winter School. This new venture was a project which involved the developing and running of a course aimed at building capacity through enhancing the knowledge of climate change and adaptation within developing countries. I think it’s safe to say that everyone involved learnt a huge amount through this exercise. At the end of the course we all felt great since we had had a super group of people and had managed to do what we had set out. Since then we have face a number of challenges in continuing this process but have come out better each time.
This year, we had a massive amount of interest in our course – a total of 280 applications! This of course makes the selection process a little hard, but it also highlighted the need for the course and the overwhelming interest that is present in Africa and other developing countries. We regret that we can only accommodated a small fracture of those interested and hope that we will be able to meet the demand better in future.
Capacity building is one of those phrases that one hears all the time and is somewhat fashionable to put out in all proposals towards funding. It is in fact very hard to ‘do’ capacity building and we need to think really hard about how we go about it. When we look at the users or stakeholders groups, it is diverse and each of these different groups may require a different approach. As a research unit who is very interested in being involved in capacity building and training, CSAG has been thinking and developing materials and workshops that are tailored to the different groups. Winter School was our first real project and product that has been going for a while and has also changed based on the requirements of the groups, but in the background various CSAG members have been doing a range of other activities that are related to training and capacity building. We therefore have a lot of experience and we’re now at the next phase where we are looking at other ‘products’ that we can offer that will meet some of the needs of the groups that the traditional Winter School has not been able to reach. So on the drawing board (although no one in the group is particularly good at drawing!) are; a shorter 5-day training course, online e-learning material and tailored training for departments/companies on request. At the end of this year we hope to offer some of these to you all – so keep an eye on the website.
Lastly, even though Winter School is only a relatively small 2 week course, the amount of work involved and the effort that is put in by everyone is immense. It is easy to forget this, especially when everything runs smoothly. As the lead person on this project, I have to thank a great team of people at CSAG and all our collaborating partners and affiliated organizations for that. Thank you everyone for making this another successful Winter School and I look forward to an even better one next year!!!
