In order to enable the staff of Forêts et Développement Rural (FODER), to produce quality research articles related to the governance of natural resources, a training workshop was organised from 30 January – 2 February 2018. This workshop was organised with financial support from the ‘Citizen Voices for Change: Congo Basin Forest Monitoring Project (CV4C)‘.
The overall aim of this workshop was to equip FODER staff to deal with issues relating to data management (collection, processing, analysis and retention) in order to ensure effective downstream implementation of FODER’s new publishing policy.
During the four days training, ten members of staff from the organisation were able to learn and master the fundamentals on:
- elaboration of data collection tools in development projects;
- data collection approaches including issues of research ethics;
- data processing and analysis tools;
- elements on the conservation of field data and the retrieval of data after a field mission or project.
Roberteau TCHOFFO, GIS expert and beneficiary of the training commented, “the workshop allowed me to improve my knowledge of writing techniques for scientific articles. These skills will be used to help draft articles submitted during training recruitment.”
In order to ensure achievement of the workshop aims and the realisation of publications, individual follow ups will be provided to participants by the training consultant. A special issue of articles produced by trained staff is expected to be published in the second half of 2018.
This training is organised at a time when FODER is engaged in a process of improving its performance as a national civil society organisation. This training aims to improve the quality of data management and information generated by its actions and thus publications produced by the organisation. Capacity building of technical staff is therefore a necessity.
Laurence Wete Soh, CV4C Project Manager at FODER said, “We are continuing work on the publishing policy, and in order for it to be operationalised, we have invited a consultant to help develop a module for capacity building of staff on the development of tools, collection and data processing, as part of interventions related to good governance and sustainable management of natural resources, including respect and rights”.
