Samantha Brown
What specific projects, campaigns or aspects of your organisation will you promote at the 2006 Giving Exchange?
The Conservation Leadership Group (CLG), a working group of the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), is dedicated to ensuring the future of biodiversity conservation in Southern Africa by capacitating and empowering future conservation leaders and role-models within and from disadvantaged communities.
It has successfully achieved this by harnessing biodiversity as an upliftment tool while simultaneously promoting its conservation through several community based projects since 1996. The Conservation Leadership Group is a shining example of our work being about more than money. This project draws in a wide variety of stakeholders from community leaders, business, academic institutions, government and young people from learners to those at tertiary level. It is all about making environmental issues part of everyday community life, creating role-models, creating employment opportunities and securing a future for biodiversity for future generations.
The second programme to be profiled is the membership programme. Apart from income generation, this programme aims to build the Endangered Wildlife Trust conservation
community to unite on issues of conservation importance and how to lead greener lives. Tools used include our website, magazines, electronic newsletters and the media.
The final aspect of our work we would profile is the work carried out by our Law and Policy Working Group, in particular their development of an Environmenatal Impact Assessment Toolkit for Civil Society. In order to conduct a successful Environmental Impact Assessment process, it is imperative that a comprehensive public participation process is followed. However, concerns are often raised about both the transparency of Environmental Impact Assessment processes and the understanding and related quality of participation by interested and affected parties.
In particular, interested and affected parties are often frustrated and barred from adequate participation by their lack of understanding of the Environmental Impact Assessment process, ignorance of their legal rights and the legal obligations of developers, their inability to access relevant information, their ignorance of and thus frequent missing of legal timelines and a cumulative uncoordinated and ineffective reactive approach to development planning.
The Law and Policy Working Group has developed a practical, user-friendly Environmental Impact Assessment Toolkit that provides clear outlines of key Environmental Impact Assessment processes and offers clear assistance and guidance to interested and affected parties across a broad range of stakeholder perspectives.
How will your organisation fit and help promote the theme 'giving is not just about money' at the 2006 Giving Exchange?
The Endangered Wildlife Trust receives a tremendous amount of non-financial support from individuals and corporates and it is largely thanks to our policy of trying to secure gifts-in-kind and probono professional services and advice that we are able to keep our running costs to a minimum. The three projects we have chosen to profile all have some excellent examples of how we have harnassed elements other than donations to progress our work.
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