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AGM Notice 2020: Online

Notice: Annual General Meeting GRBR 

4th of December 2020, 10h00 – 11h30

Dear Garden Route Biosphere Reserve stakeholders,

With COVID-19 still very much with us and the need to avoid public gatherings, we are holding the forthcoming AGM online.

You are cordially invited to join the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve 2020 Annual General Meeting to be held via Microsoft Teams.   (View AGM invitation as pdf)

Please RSVP Ms Luzanne Visagie at admin@gardenroutebiosphere.org.za before 1 December to receive a link to join the meeting.

AGENDA

 1. Welcome 

2. Introduction of board members present 

3. Apologies 

4. Ratification of previous minutes 

5. Matters arising 

6. Chairman’s statement 

7. Presentation of the financial statements 

8. Questions and answers 

9. Closing 

 

Connecting to TEAMS

Please note that you will need to either (1) download the TEAMS App to your device (https://www.microsoft.com/en-za/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/downlaod-app) or you can join via (2) the web browser (link provided when you rsvp and receive meeting invite link) to access the platform.

The meeting documents and a link to join the meeting will be sent to you when you RSVP.

How to join a TEAMS meeting

(1) Join a Teams meeting from the app (https://www.microsoft.com/en-za/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/download-app): From your Calendar, select Join on an in progress meeting. Choose the audio and video settings you want. Select Join now.

OR

(2) Join a Teams meeting on the web: In your email invite, select Join Microsoft Teams Meeting. Type in your name. Choose the audio and video settings you want.

Select Join now.

Depending on meeting settings, you’ll get in right away, or go to a lobby where someone in the meeting can admit you.

You can also view an instructional video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH6bSIwR0-4

Online Meeting Etiquette

To ensure that our session runs as efficiently as possible we ask that you take note of the following online meeting etiquette:

• Please note that the session will be recorded and your participation in the meeting indicates acknowledgement of this

• When joining the meeting please have you microphone on mute to cut out any background noise, you can enable it when you need to speak.

• To get the chairperson’s attention we ask that you put your camera on (if you wish to do so) or raise your hand or ask to be addressed in the comments. The chair will acknowledge your request and invite you to enable your camera and or microphone.

• When it is your turn to speak, please announce your name before speaking.

• You may wish to use the conversation chats on the side to send a message. Please also introduce yourself when commenting in the chat.

We hope you can join us and look forward to seeing you there.

Luzanne Visagie

Administrator

Garden Route Biosphere Reserve

AGM invite 2020

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Chair’s Message – June 2020

For this mid-year update, I was hoping to address you as our stakeholders on a more positive note. However, the COVID-19 global pandemic has indeed changed the world as we know it, turning our lifestyles upside down and disrupting our ‘normal’. The pandemic is impacting on how we work, live, and engage with one another in fundamental ways. It has presented itself not only as a serious health issue, but also a societal one which has revealed deep social chasms across the world. In South Africa, it has brought our vulnerabilities into stark light, especially inequality and food (in)security as our leaders attempt to do their best to balance the economic impacts with the ongoing health risks the pandemic poses.

Although the pandemic can be viewed as a significant disrupter to our social-ecological systems, it can also be seen as an opportunity.  There are several scenarios, all dependent on how leaders, governments and society respond to the virus and its economic aftermath. The pandemic provides us with a window of opportunity to reflect on our world and to refocus our attention on what we value. We can choose to use this crisis to reimagine our futures and create a more humane and better world.  So, in our rush to return to ‘normal’, we should be considering what it is we wish to rush back to. Will we take the chance to change how and what we do?

The Garden Route Biosphere Reserve and its activities have naturally been severely impacted.  We were in the midst of a participatory collaborative strategy development process when the country went into a national lockdown.  The many workshops scheduled during the months of May and June as part of this process have been halted as the methods of engagement are inappropriate for our current times.  Furthermore, the landscape is changing in light of the pandemic and what we were planning for may no longer be the world we find post-COVID.

We considered taking the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve (GRBR) collaborative strategy development process online, as so many engagements have done, but we fear this approach would further marginalise those we so desperately seek to involve.  It seemingly perpetuates the inequalities in our country, favouring those with the ability and access to online engagements and leave the silent voices out of the planning for the future. With this in mind, the GRBR has chosen to put our collaborative strategy development process on hold until such time we can fully engage better reassess what a post COVID-19 world looks like.

Despite the setbacks to our collaborative strategy development process, we nonetheless choose to seize the window of opportunity to reflect, reprioritise and focus on being responsive to the immediate needs of our stakeholders during these tumultuous times.  We are therefore investing our efforts into fundraising for urban food and water security, sanitation and other relevant job creation projects.

We believe our temporary deviation in focus responds to some of the pressing needs in the landscape and works toward making the GRBR more adaptive and resilient going forward.

Sincerely,

Dr Bianca Currie

Chair, Garden Route Biosphere Reserve

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Workshop Outcomes Report: Enviro. Education Strategic Planning

The Environmental Education Strategic Planning Workshop Report is now available for download.

This report is focused on the outcomes of the first Youth Environmental Education Workshop held at the Environmental Education Centre at the Garden Route Botanical Gardens on the 26th of February 2020. These notes document the outcomes of the workshop which was primarily aimed at mapping the ‘education landscape’ and identifying gaps and needs in youth environmental education in the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve domain.

The first workshop invited participants to introduce their organisation and briefly share with the group their education focus  current activities. A second open discussion was facilitated around the gaps and needs in youth environmental education in the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve.

A post-workshop survey eliciting participants’ feedback on the workshop yielded positive responses. Comments included:

• Informative, inspiring and “eye opening” • Good, necessary and important! • Productive • Well-structured and well conducted.

Many participants commented on the fair and open discussion where the diverse stakeholders were given a platform to share their programs and exchange ideas. However, one participant offered constructive criticism and wrote, “some key players were absent” and added that some topics were somewhat broad and irrelevant. The participant stated that for future discussions it would be best to narrow the focus in order to be more productive. Other participants highlighted the need to get teachers involved and that the time-slot for the workshop inhibited their participation.

Workshop outcomes – including opportunities and challenges – will need to be revisited given the COVID-19 impacts on education spaces.

VIEW THE OUTCOMES REPORT HERE

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Workshops CANCELLED until further notice

In light of the Corona virus / Covid-19 threat and ensuing advice arising from the President’s address (15 March 2020), we regret to inform you that all the workshops (all focus areas) for the GRBR collaborative strategy development process will be cancelled until further notice.

These scheduled workshops include:

Town and land Use Planning
3 April 2020 (Knysna)
15 May 2020 (Jeffreys Bay)

Water pollution
24 March 2020 (Knysna)
8 May 2020 (George)

Education
18 March 2020 (George)
8 April 2020 (George)

We will communicate new dates once the threat has passed and apologize for the inconvenience.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Bianca Currie
Chair
UNESCO Garden Route Biosphere Reserve

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Strategy Planning: Water Pollution – Workshop 1

Invitation to address water quality issues in the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve

Date: Tuesday 24th March 2020
Venue: Knysna Log-Inn Hotel, 16 Gray St, Knysna Central, South Africa
Link to venue: https://goo.gl/maps/gs7x3REvce29wWdr5 

Workshop Overview
The Garden Route Biosphere Reserve (GRBR) is undergoing a collaborative strategy development process, and as part of this process interested individuals and organisation are cordially invited to attend the first of two workshops to identify and contribute to tackling water quality issues within the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve. We hope that our approach will lead to a strong sense of action required at the landscape level, while learning from and working with specific project level work already underway. We are looking for tangible actions that can be taken to conserve our valuable water resources.

The purpose of the first workshop is to:
1. Identify and discuss major threats to water quality in the GRBR domain,
2. Identify existing water quality initiatives, where we invite participants with existing initiatives to give a short (5 minutes) introduction.
3. Ask how we as a community can come together to tackle some of the identified threats and to support existing successful initiatives.

The key outcomes of both workshops are to establish a working group to develop a programme to tackle Water Pollution, which the GRBR will ratify into a proposal document by June 2020.  The proposal will be used to leverage the GRBR as an overarching mechanism to raise funds for coordinated actions by stakeholders in the landscape which are aligned with the vision and mission of the GRBR.

Participants are encouraged to commit to and attend both workshops to ensure continuity and consistency in the development of ideas, knowledge and outcomes.  The workshops will be held on Tuesday 24th of March in Knysna and Friday 8th of May in George.

Registration for the Workshops
Please express your interest in attending as soon as possible, but not later than 19th of March 2020.

 RSVP email to Luzanne Visagie at admin@gardenroutebiosphere.org.za  (or Luzanne.visagie@mandela.ac.za)

Contact Person: Dr Louw Claassens
Email Address: kyss.louw@gmail.com

Please let us know if you would like to occupy a 5-minute slot to introduce your initiative.

Project Team: Bianca Currie, Louw Claassens and Ntombi Vundla

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Strategy Planning: Environmental Education – Workshop 2

Topic: 2nd Environmental Education Workshop (as part of Strategy Planning for the GRBR)

Date: Wednesday 18th March, 2020
Venue: Garden Route Environmental Education Centre, Garden Route Botanical Garden, George

Workshop Overview
The Garden Route Biosphere Reserve (GRBR) cordially invites the participation of all individuals and organisations that are involved in environmental education programs in the Garden Route to collaborate in developing a coordinated approach to youth environmental education within the GRBR. The biosphere reserve seeks to work together with stakeholders and actors in the landscape to collaboratively develop a programme for youth environmental education in the biosphere reserve.

The GRBR has already hosted the first of three workshops, which identified current successes and strengths which can be leveraged as well as gaps and needs in the education landscape that the GRBR youth programme can fill.

The second workshop will consolidate a workable program for the youth based on the success, gaps and needs analysis. The third workshop will be dedicated to finalising a programme and informing a budget as well as identify potential funders the GRBR can target a proposal submission to.

The key outcomes of the workshop series are to establish a working group to develop a Youth Environmental Education Programme which the GRBR will ratify into a proposal document by June 2020.  The proposal will be used to leverage the GRBR to raise funds for coordinated actions by stakeholders in the landscape which are aligned with the vision and mission of the GRBR.

Participants are encouraged to commit to and attend all the workshops to ensure continuity and consistency in the development of ideas, knowledge and outcomes.  The second workshop will be held on Wednesday 18th of March and the third on Wednesday the 8th of April in George at the Garden Route Environmental Education Centre.

Registration for the Workshops
Please express your interest in attending as soon as possible, but not later than 15 March 2020, by sending an rsvp email to Luzanne Visagie at admin@gardenroutebiosphere.org.za or Luzanne.visagie@mandela.ac.za

Contact Person: Monica Vaccaro
Email address: monica@landmarkfoundation.org.za
Project Team: Bianca Currie, Monica Vaccaro

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Strategy Planning: Environmental Education – Workshop 1

Topic: Strategy Planning for Environmental Education in the Biosphere Reserve
Venue: Garden Route Environmental Education Centre, George
Dates: Wednesday 26th of February, Wednesday 18th of March and Wednesday 8th of April, 2020.
Draft Program: Click to view here: DRAFT Program for Environmental Education workshop 26 Feb 2010

Workshop Overview
The Garden Route Biosphere Reserve (GRBR) cordially invites the participation of all individuals and organisations that are involved in environmental education programs in the Garden Route to collaborate in developing a coordinated approach to youth environmental education within the GRBR. The biosphere reserve seeks to work together with stakeholders and actors in the landscape to collaboratively develop a programme for youth environmental education in the biosphere reserve.

The GRBR will be hosting a series of 3 workshops. The first workshop aims at identifying current successes and strengths which can be leveraged as well as gaps and needs in the education landscape that the GRBR youth programme can fill. The second workshop will consolidate a workable program for the youth based on the success, gaps and needs analysis. The third workshop will be dedicated to finalising a programme and informing a budget as well as identify potential funders the GRBR can target a proposal submission to.
The key outcomes of the workshop series are to establish a working group to develop a Youth Environmental Education Programme which the GRBR will ratify into a proposal document by June 2020. The proposal will be used to leverage the GRBR to raise funds for coordinated actions by stakeholders in the landscape which are aligned with the vision and mission of the GRBR.

Participants are encouraged to commit to and attend all three workshops to ensure continuity and consistency in the development of ideas, knowledge and outcomes. The workshops will be held on Wednesday the 26th of February, Wednesday the 18th of March and Wednesday the 8th of April in George at the Garden Route Environmental Education Centre.

Registration for the Workshops
Please express your interest in attending as soon as possible: send an RSVP email to Luzanne Visagie (admin@gardenroutebiosphere.org.za) before 23rd February 2020.

Draft Program (Click here): DRAFT Program for Environmental Education workshop 26 Feb 2010

Contact Person: Monica Vaccaro
Email Address: monica@landmarkfoundation.org.za
Project Team: Bianca Currie, Monica Vaccaro (Coordinator)

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Chair’s Report AGM 2019

Dr Bianca Currie, Chair of our Biosphere Reserve, delivered the Chair’s Report at the Annual General Meeting on the 13th December 2019:

It has been a year of transition, consolidation and strategizing for the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve. The transition from the interim board to the reserves first board, who will serve for the next five years, was a lengthy and administratively heavy process. The new board only officially gained control and signing power of the reserve’s bank account mid-2019. We now have a sound decision making body for the Biosphere Reserve. The current board members bring a good mix of skills and expertise to the table. They have helped to provide the Biosphere Reserve with stability and formulated an implementable overarching strategy and a draft communications strategy taking into consideration our limitations and constraints.

The strategy documents have provided the Biosphere Reserve with direction and purpose placing the reserve on a clear set of tracks for the future.

The Garden Route Biosphere Reserve’s overarching strategy
The Garden Route Biosphere Reserves overarching strategy looks at the landscape through a social ecological systems lens and considers our natural and social capitals, our strengths, weaknesses; as well as drivers in the system and threats to our assets. This strategy now consolidates the biosphere reserve efforts into six key focus areas namely: 1) Landscape Management Coordination, primarily focused on facilitating the coordination of alien invasive plant clearing in the Biosphere Reserve;
2) Green Enterprise Mentorship Development, primarily aimed at developing skills and capacity in the youth;
3) School Youth Biosphere Programme, to work with school goers, colleges and universities;
4) Biosphere Membership, to develop the necessary infrastructure to make a connection with stakeholders in the biosphere reserve;
5) Water Pollution, aimed at improving the state of rivers and estuaries in the biospherereserve and especially related to pollution; and
6) Town / Land Use Planning Capacity Development focused on sustainable cities development and improved decision-making regarding land use planning in the Biosphere Reserve.

One of the challenges the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve currently faces is the capacity to be an implementing agent in the landscape. Without funding for dedicated staff, we are limited to playing a co-ordination and facilitation role. We therefore firmly acknowledge the need to work together with our stakeholders. Over the next year the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve endeavours to establish a working group structure made up of stakeholders currently undertaking valuable work in the landscape, within each of the key focus areas. We ask how we can support and strengthen existing agents and action taking place. In the coming year we wish to collaboratively develop key focus area strategies, funding proposals and action plans, building on what our stakeholders are currently doing in each of the areas. We believe our success lies in a bottom-up process working with agents in the landscape.

The Biosphere Reserve also expects to formally establish an advisory group made up of those who lead each of the key focus area working groups. This advisory group will provide a further layer of expertise to inform decision-making related to the biosphere reserve and the activities it engages in. A structure where the board is informed by the advisory group also provides a bottom-up and top-down information channel for communication to flow, allowing decision-makers to be informed by those on the ground; and the decisions being made can filter from the board to the agents in the field.

Draft communications strategy
A second equally important strategy developed for the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve this year was a communications strategy. A draft communications strategy has been formulated which provides a vision and mission statement for the reserve. It includes a draft rapid assessment tool to guide what the Biosphere Reserve communicates on behalf of its stakeholders. The draft vision for the Biosphere Reserve is to connect people and environments for enhanced diversity and wellbeing; and the draft mission is to improve collaborations to support integrated environmental management and equitable development. The draft strategy also expresses who we should be communicating with, what
we should be communicating, and how we should be communicating in light of our limitations.

Funding
We are grateful for the small operational funding we have received in the last year from the Department of Environment and Development Planning. However, our primary need in the coming years is to raise funding for the development of the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve, and its growth into an institutional structure that is not limited by its capacity to implement. The working group strategies and funding proposals are our first steps in raising sorely needed funds for collaborative action in the landscape. The operational funding from government will allow us to employ the necessary expertise to ratify the strategies into funding proposals.

Summary
In summary, progress has been slow but determined in 2019. We have been transitioning to a new board and strategizing for the future direction of the Biosphere Reserve. The year has been about putting the necessary guiding documents and processes in place while consolidating the governance structure of the reserve. With these vital pieces of the machine in place we have clearer focus and direction with which to move forward. Our priorities next year are to elicit support, develop relationships and partnerships, and work closely with our stakeholders on the ground to raise funding for activities in the landscape.

I believe we now have a plan which sets us on a positive trajectory and together with our stakeholders we can grow and develop the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve into a useful mechanism for sustainable development in our region.

Dr Bianca Currie
Chair
UNESCO Garden Route Biosphere Reserve