Like most of us as individuals, in 2020, we at OLF as an organisation, spent some time to reflect on what we’ve achieved to date, and where we want to go from here. As a relatively small organisation, it was really important to Tim and the team to identify how to best spend the resources we have (through your generous contributions) to make difference in young people’s lives, and of course the species and habitats that they will work on in the coming years.
Your support is important to us, so we wanted to create a strategy you could get behind and to ensure that your contributions have the best possible impact on the ground. So we took time to sit down together and develop a new 5-year strategy in order to really think through the work we were doing in the UK and The Gambia and how we could double down on our successes.
The result of this, is a new five year strategy which will focus on three core areas; 1) Unlocking the potential of young conservation leaders; 2) Connecting like-mind conservationists across borders; and, 3) inspiring and enabling young conservationists in The Gambia.
The first two objectives lean on the recognition that career progression often relies on having the opportunity and tools to make a difference, and of course to have role models lighting the way. We believe connecting conservationists and providing leadership training will give young people the self-belief, opportunity and skills they need to make a difference for the natural world. While the latter aspect was singled out to address the unique challenges of supporting young leaders in The Gambia, specifically in terms of access to environmental education and work experience in the sector.
The resulting strategy is ambitious; aiming to reach over 100 young conservation leaders in the UK and Africa, who we believe will make a difference for nature, both where they live and beyond. We’re also developing plans to expand our reach through working with organisations which support our own aims. All of this however, must be underpinned by the required resources and systems, so that we, as a team, are able generate more support and assist more young leaders to unlock their potential.
A new but key area of focus for us currently, is to generate the resources we need to realise the strategy. In the meantime, we will include more information on the projects which feed into this new strategy in coming updates, however, if you’d like to know more, please do contact the OLF team.
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