Supporting community-led capacity building for Village Sustainability Plans in the North Rupununi

Village Sustainability Plans (VSPs) are a roadmap for Indigenous communities in Guyana to chart their path towards more prosperous and ecologically sustainable futures. Plans include projects that are reviewed yearly and submitted for funding to Regional and Central Government. However, accessible and contextually relevant tools for robust project planning and implementation are lacking, leaving communities with a fear that projects may fail, and the use of community resources may be ineffective.

In this context, the North Rupununi District Development Board (NRDDB), The Open University and Cobra Collective Guyana have joined forces to enable Indigenous communities to design and lead VSP projects that have robust management structures and include detailed actions for data collection and impact monitoring. The project has a focus on strengthening environmental mapping, monitoring of environmental data, and data management. This is a follow up to the data sovereignty work done under the SMART project (see https://cobracollective.org/projects/smart.php). The environmental sustainability of projects is paramount for Indigenous communities for whom their land and wetlands are a source of livelihoods and a guarantee of their wellbeing today and in the future.

Process: The process involved a pre-training assessment of participants’ knowledge of VSPs and their aspirations and needs. Participants highlighted significant gaps in skills and knowledge that hinder effective VSP implementation. In particular, they sought training in environmental monitoring techniques and technologies, financial governance, but also in relation to sustainability and measures to strengthen accountability. They wanted a better understanding of the role of the Amerindian Act 2006 in determining how community members are consulted and involved in VSP decision-making and project implementation. Enabling wide participation in decision-making processes was seen as necessary to tackle issues such as the misuse of funds and lack of accountability. Inclusive processes will need to balance competing needs, such as negotiating differences between the youth perspectives and elders’ priorities and combine economic development with social and environmental aspirations. Overall, while VSPs offer a structured approach to community development, addressing the knowledge and skills gaps raised by participants was seen as essential for the successful implementation of VSPs.

Participants undertaking the VSP training

Structure: We structured the six-day training programme as follows:

• Defining individual terms such as ‘village’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘plan’, and exploring legal documents such as the Amerindian Act 2006.
• VSP governance, accountability and transparency, in relation to the Amerindian Act 2006.
• A practical project case study of agroforestry led by Andrew Campbell, Guyana’s preeminent Indigenous expert in cocoa farming and chocolate processing.
• Training on monitoring and evaluation including environmental, social and financial monitoring techniques and technologies such as drones and QGIS (open-source mapping tool).
• Developing short reflective videos on what had been learnt that can be used to share skills and understandings with the wider community, and act as key resources for future VSP capacity building programmes.

Evaluation: Overall, participants displayed renewed awareness of the value of their environment and traditional knowledge about it. The collective readings and discussions of the Amerindian Act 2006 improved understanding of village governance and how accountability of leaders can be strengthened through village councils and meetings. They highlighted that after the training they will “value what (they) have and not waste natural resources”; “consider planting cocoa in their village”: “start documenting traditional medicinal plants”; “think of ways of reforesting”; “consider the role of VSPs in preserving Indigenous knowledge and culture”. Not only did the training strengthen knowledge of robust processes for VSP project development, but the example of cocoa planting through the agroforestry case study ignited interest in environmental sustainability guided by Indigenous knowledge.

What next? Based on the experiences of the training co-design, the resulting 6-day programme, development of video resources and the assessment of learning, The Open University/Cobra Collective team will spend the next few months consolidating the insights and materials into a multimedia training toolkit, in consultation with key stakeholders such as the NRDDB, Conservation International and the National Toshaos Council. The plan is then to support the participants in directly leading a wider VSP training programme within communities. This will enable us to consolidate and test the VSP Project Capacity Building Toolkit with a view of making the toolkit available to stakeholders such as Conservation International and the National Toshaos Council for their own national VSP capacity-building programmes.