Participatory Learning and Action Network Building by Environmental NGOs in Hainan for Sustainable Development in Coastal Communities

In the last two to three decades, many social organizations in China have already utilized community participation methods and collaborative leadership enhancement etc. to effectively stimulate the endogenous strengths of communities and have made varying degrees of progress in achieving sustainable development. In recent years, social multi-governance structure and system led by the Chinese government has also been fully absorbing strengths from social organizations and civil society to build synergy for ecological civilization construction and rural revitalization. Environmental organizations in Hainan have applied work strategic frameworks summarized by experienced social organizations into further developing deep partnerships and cooperation models with communities, governments and all sectors of society based on the previous foundation of cooperation between local environmental protection organizations represented by China Blue and local governments. As a result, clearer communication strategies are in an urgent need to optimize local NGOs insights of community resources, conditions, and needs and accumulate experience in negotiating and co-creating with community partners as well as learn more from the successful experiences of other social organizations, with the aim to take bold and innovative actions. 1- A co-learning and co-action network of community participatory work methods and cross-sectoral coordination will be built, with relatively stable members, operational mechanisms and social influence. 2- A co-creation action program will be launched in Huiwen that members of the learning network mobilize and motivate community members to actively participate in activities related to environmental management by participatory work methods and cross- disciplinary collaboration skills for improving the coastal wetland ecosystem. 3- A learning and practice support toolkit on community work and cross-disciplinary collaboration for mobilizing coastal communities in environmental governance will be developed, which will be spread among social organization practitioners in Hainan. Overall goal : Environmental agencies in Hainan, with women as the core force, target at mobilize the local community to participate in improving the coastal ecological environment through a strategy characterized by joint learning, application and synergies of interrelated actions. Ultimately, launch a co-creation community action that demonstrates the can enhanced capacity and mobility of environmental agencies and the effective operations of multi-party collaboration mechanism. 1) Establish a co-learning and co-action network involving members of environmental agencies in Hainan (no less than 5 organizations, 15 persons, more than 50% women, and most of the core leaders are women), with community participatory work methods and cross-sectoral coordination. 2) Implement an action co-created and implemented by the above-mentioned network members to raise the environmental protection awareness of the members in a typical farming village in Huiwen (about 300 people, accounting for about 20%-30% of the whole population) and to improve the coastal wetland ecosystem 3) Create a knowledge base or toolkit compiled by the learning materials and practical experiences accumulated during the project and share it to other social organization peers (covering at least 200 people and >50% women) and government or community representatives to encourage and inspire more similar actions in the future.