Going Virtual: Delivering Regional Environmental Compliance Training Workshop Online

October 9, 2020

Increasing the capacity of host-country IRS staff across various facets of environmental compliance remains a priority for the VectorLink project. With face-to-face regional training programs being canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was important to reassess the original workshop design in order to maintain a high level of productivity and progression despite these uncertain times.

Embracing this challenge, the VL EC Home Office team developed a training plan to target IRS staff from the Anglophone, Francophone, and Portuguese-speaking VectorLink countries. This resulted in a three-part workshop series: first with VL ECOs only, second with ECOs and invited government NMCP participants from Anglophone countries, and third with ECOs and invited government NMCP participants from Francophone countries and Mozambique. 

Finding the best tools for the job

“Understanding the dynamics and constraints in the countries we work was the first step to finding a platform that matched our training needs,” said Albert Acquaye, VL Environmental Compliance Manager. “Zoom was chosen because it requires low bandwidth and offered multiple tools for engagement, which was critical to the success of the workshop.”

The workshop was designed to be instructive and participatory, using videos, breakout rooms, chat boxes, polling questions, and simultaneous translation which were ways to keep the participants interested, engaged, and assess their progress throughout the training.  

With challenge comes opportunity

Compared to the original plan for face-to-face training, the virtual training workshop provided the opportunity to engage a larger number of participants per country. “We were amazed at the number of people that participated in each workshop series. In total, 80 government implementers and 53 VL staff were trained with the resounding request for more environmental compliance training” stated Kerri-Ann Guyah, VL Environmental Compliance Manager. “It shows real interest in the subject area and a zeal to align existing systems to best management practices.”

A big congrats to our VectorLink EC Team for going above and beyond!