Sustainable Tourism-based On Natural Resource Management with Gender Balance towards Women (STRONGBOW) Project under the aegis of Netherland’s Initiative for Capacity Building in Higher Education – NICHE, Ethiopia, has started four-day ‘Training of Trainers’ workshop on Natural Resources Management skills enhancement at Arba Minch University’s Main Campus. The workshop will continue from 15th to 18th July.

 

STRONGBOW Project is being managed by the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network (HoA-REC/N) that focuses on environmental concerns and sustainable development options within the Horn of Africa.

It is an autonomous institution under Addis Ababa University that facilitates, strengthens and advocates for initiatives related to environmental conservation and natural resource management.

HoA-REC&N leads STRONGBOW Project having a consortium of five Ethiopian universities - Addis Ababa University, Arba Minch University, Mizan-Tepi University, Wondo-Genet College of Forestry & Natural Resource, and Jimma University.

The objective of the project is to build capacity on natural resources and tourism management. Two PhD scholars from each of the participating universities are pursuing their research in natural resources & tourism management with fund obtained from STRONGBOW project.

The project also gives financial assistance to MSc students with view to support them write a quality MSc Thesis. This project also provides technical assistance to develop market-driven curriculum. KU Leuven University, Belgium and VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands are partners of this project from European side.

This ongoing workshop is organized to train trainers on natural resource management. The workshop is expected to enhance the skills of staff members of Natural Resource Management Staff members of respective partner Universities in using innovating teaching techniques and doing quality research in the area. There are four resource persons for this workshop: three from Netherlands and Belgium and one from Mekelle University. Out of 25 participants six of them belong to AMU.

The first day program started with welcoming speech by Arba Minch University President, Dr. Feleke Woldeyes, and brief introduction by Dean of College of Business and Economics, Dr Solomon Markos, who is also the STRONGBOW Project Focal Person from AMU, followed by presentation and discussion on problem-oriented research, problem-based learning, gender and ecotourism.

Later in the day, they had focused group discussion sharing their experiences and under plenary session they looked into the case study on Fishery village near Lake Chamo.

On the second day, all participants visited fishery village where they had integrated work focusing problems and researchable, gender and ecotourism issues. On 17th July, the day will begin with plenary session presenting their poster prepared on the previous day’s visit, followed by group discussion and presentations.

The participants would also discuss as to how they can bring in teaching experience from field work, steps to be followed in terms of research etc. They would also discuss ways to streamline gender issues into teaching.

Strongbow Project is funded by Netherlands Government – NUFFIC. The partners of this project include – VU, Amsterdam-The Netherlands, Central University of Technology, Free State- South Africa, KU Leuven Sustainable Earth Research Centre, Belgium and Five Universities from Ethiopia including Arba Minch University.

By Philips Joseph