Progress report for
Small-Scale Fisheries Academy in Senegal
Achievement at a glance
The SSF academy is intended to serve as a safe multi-actor platform for free and respectful exchanges, co-learning and co-production of knowledge and innovations for marine protection, the sustainable use of marine and coastal resources and sustainable and prosperous artisanal fisheries. The Academy presents itself as an opportunity for articulations between the Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and local action which respects the expectations of the populations concerned. In a world of globalised markets, climate change and other challenges, bringing together different sources of knowledge and perspectives opens up new opportunities for collective action in search of maintaining or acquiring good quality of life and living in harmony with nature. To this end, Mundus maris has supported the first development steps of the academy with the testing of visual participatory training methods in two occasions in June and October 2019 in Yoff and Hann, Senegal. These took place against the backdrop of the need for gender equity as a crucial part of implementing the SSF Guidelines and contribute to SDG 14. Men and women from small-scale fishing communities learnt to critically analyse their own social and economic conditions, appreciate value chains, learnt to better articulate their own aspirations, needs, constraints and opportunities for collaborative success. They set achievable goals taking into account concrete conditions in the family and the wider community. Distance mentoring helped applying methods autonomously between workshops: https://www.mundusmaris.org/index.php/en/projects/proj2019/2255-1pilot-en<br>The most successful participant doubled her income within four months despite continued structural constraints of difficult access to credit and market: https://www.mundusmaris.org/index.php/en/projects/proj2019/2255-1pilot-en
<br>The group decided to strengthen the local committee of the academy in Yoff and plan work for 2020 to allow new leadership to emerge and enable collective advocacy and action. This is on-going.
Challenges faced in implementation
The pilot training is based on the conception of an ecology of knowledges proposed by Boaventura de Souza Santos and organised through a communication strategy enabling a change of social behaviour. The concept borrows from Paulo Freire's vision of dialogue and the so-called "Gender Action Learning System" (GALS) developed by Linda Mayeux. It is brought to life by the practice of graphic facilitation led by Maria Fernanda Arraes Treffner. As the methods are innovative, it takes time for men and women who may not have had formal schooling to appropriate the methods and approaches for individual and collective action success.<br>Weak public social and other support services make it difficult particularly for women to free up the time from their long working hours for engaging fully and rise to leadership positions such that they become trainer/facilitators for others in their own right. That process needs time under any circumstances, but may be slower under current resource constraints. These may be addressed in different ways, e.g. some external funding support to the academy and its local training and trainers, setting up a system of locally paid services once a sufficient level of proficiency and leadership is achieved.
<br>Financial limitations to provide more professional facilitation are a significant constraint, particularly in view of SSF leaders in other countries approaching us for similar support.
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Next Steps
The group decided to strengthen the local committee of the academy in Yoff and plan work for 2020 to allow new leadership to emerge and enable collective advocacy and action. This is on-going.<br>
<br>To the extent possible, the collaboration will be sought with other projects and organisations to advance the scope and scale of the academy and increase benefits for the people and communities involved.
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<br>A teaching kit about the ecosystem approach to fisheries developed for West African schools for FAO some time ago is among the usable pedagogical tools: https://www.mundusmaris.org/index.php/en/projects/proj2011 Together with bringing in expertise on demand, e.g. about climate change effects and adaptation options various approaches are envisaged to expand and diversify the knowledge ecology.
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<br>Interest in similar platforms has been expressed by SSF leaders in Côte d'Ivoire, Tanzania and Kenya. Discussions are underway to consolidate and articulate the interest more concretely and explore funding opportunities to build such academies at national and international levels for accelerated learning and upscaling.
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<br>We believe that developing approaches deriving the skeleton of essentials for a successful SSF academy in different places are crucial to scale and thus demonstrate in practice the articulation between global goals and local practice.
Beneficiaries
The men and women involved in the training of trainers in the SSF academy in Yoff, Senegal are some 30 fishers, divers, fish wholesalers, women micro-fishmongers and boat painters.
<br>They already interact intensively with family and other community members and their activities are endorsed by the group of community elders as a way to engrain positive attitudes and willingness in change for improved livelihoods in the wider community. The work of the academy is reaching already out well beyond those directly taking part in active learning workshops.
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Actions
The fundamental approach is empowerment of those actively involved in the academy to create positive impact themselves.<br>
<br>During the workshop sessions the participants produced a vision of what constitutes a happy life for them and a one-year action plan for improving livelihoods. They identified priority actions for a positive change in each one's professional activity. By way of example, in the four months since the first test training the most strongly engaged female fish seller has already doubled her income. In addition, they collectively built an overview of the socio-ecological adversities and their effects on the artisanal fishery.
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<br>Participants also exchanged views on the importance of sharing with others in the community the information and learning they have benefited from within the academy. They agreed on the next steps that will enable them to build on these skills relevant to the emergence of leadership and governance of the group engaged in the Small-Scale Fisheries Academy (SSF academy) in Yoff.
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<br>Among the planned activities, the sharing of tools with family members and community groups, the election of an extended office that will work as a local committee of the academy in Yoff and will define a work plan for the year 2020, were prominent next steps.