ConserveOnline | Standard 4: Well-Designed and Executed Activities

Standard 4: Well-Designed and Executed Activities

By admin on 8/9/2007 | Keyword(s): Conservation networks

Standards

Rationale

A network’s activities are the principal means of ensuring that a network benefits its members and achieves its objectives. They are the principal determinant of network costs as well as benefits. Well-designed and executed activities with clear objectives are essential for sustaining member commitment.

Good Practice

Assess Individual and Collective Needs.
Continually assess members’ challenges, and design network activities specifically to help members resolve them. Such assessment can be accomplished relatively informally through conversations with members and/or through group discussions. Or it can be more systematic, for example using structured interviews, surveys, or self-assessment tools.

Design Activities to Meet Members’ Needs.
A variety of activities can be effective for creating and sharing know-how among network members, and they can often be used in combination. The following table lists examples of activities. These more formal activities should be complemented by planned social activities that foster unrestrained creative thinking and strengthening relationships among network members.

Activity	Application Example
Multi-site experiments to develop and/or test practice(s)	The Aridlands Grazing Network is conducting a ten-year experiment to determine effective ways to manage the interaction of prescribed fire and grazing.
Action training, in which participants are introduced to a new skill or technique and apply it, getting real work done as they learn	The Efroymson Coaches Network uses action training to build practitioner capacity for Conservation Action Planning.
Peer-exchanges, in which one or more members share know-how at the work site of another member, helping the latter resolve a challenge	A member ofMicronesians in Island Conservation helped a colleague in another country train 20 conservation officers and develop legislation for marine protected areas.
Peer-review, in which a work product or work-in-progress is evaluated against standards of practice	Grassland Restoration Network members peer-review each others’ work, and offer peer-review to non-members.
After Action Review, in which the results of an action are assessed against intended results to increase the effectiveness of future action	The Latin American Private Lands Conservation Network usedAARto draw lessons from the execution of land deals, and to define standards and best practices.
Facilitated discussions to solve a clearly-defined individual or common challenge	Micronesians in Island Conservation dedicates a portion of every member retreat to defining and solving common challenges its members face, producing local, national and region-wide solutions.