Elyse and myself just
returned from the Young Professionals Pre-Congress Youth Capacity Building
Workshop in the Blue Mountains. This workshop brought together 28 passionate
young adults from around the world to share ideas and work towards creating the
Young Peoples Pact that will be presented during the World Parks Congress. I
found it very rewarding to finally get to meet many of the youth whom I have
been working with during the months leading up to the congress. One of the
first activities we worked on was a break out 'sticky note' session. Each youth
had the opportunity to contribute text on sticky notes, expressing their
opinions about what makes us happy as young conservation leaders in protected
area work, what we feel the challenges and barriers are, and what we want the
new generation of conservation to look like. This discussion was the initial
step that has shaped our Young Peoples Pact. The Young Peoples Pact for People,
Parks and Planet is a document that will contribute to the Promise of
Sydney, and sets a series of protected area conservation action items that
young people will commit to for the next ten years.
To rejuvenate from
the collaborative brain storming sessions, I had the opportunity to explore and
learn about the areas cultural and natural history through a hiking tour. The
hike began with a traditional smoke ceremony, and then my group explored a
hiking trail with two of the parks rangers. The rangers pointed our all of the fascinating
flora and fauna along the trail, including some of the majestic bird species,
and local medicinal plants for us to try. At one point I saw the distinct web
of the funnel web spider, which was quite terrifying, as it is apparently the
worlds most venomous spider! I survived :) Our hiked weaved throughout
beautiful waterfalls and unique geomorphic features, which was quite a new
landscape for me. The hike was a very important opportunity for me to connect
to the local landscape and help me clear our mind after our lengthy
international dialogues and debates.
Ending off the
workshop, our Young Professionals crew got to travel to the Google Headquarters
in Sydney, to tour around their building and learn about some of the innovative
ways they are keeping their employees happy (free cafes, games rooms, a room
for staff napping!). We had a fun interactive workshop with one of the staff, which
showed us how to use some of their free mapping tools for our own networks and
projects. We learnt about 'my maps', 'tour builder', 'open data kit', and
'photo spheres'. I really enjoyed working with 'my maps', and just used this
tool to map out the countries where our youth memberships come from for
the
Global Youth
Biodiversity Network (a network I helped to establish).
The World Park
Congress is now in full swing, and I am filling my every waking hour with
sessions, meetings, networking dinners and social media.
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