Ashgabat, 14 June 2010 – The UNDP project «Conservation and Sustainable Use of Globally Significant Biological Diversity in Hazar State Reserve on the Caspian Sea Coast», implemented jointly with the Global Environment Facility and the Ministry of Nature protection of Turkmenistan held a seminar on «International experience in developing training programs for specialists of protected areas of Turkmenistan». The seminar was held by Michael Appleton, International consultant of the project at the training center established within the project implementation at the National Institute of Deserts, Flora and Fauna.

The main objective of the seminar was to introduce participants with the key elements in developing trainings and programs for specialists of protected areas of Turkmenistan as well as the use if various modern techniques of teaching.

At the seminar, the potential trainers of the training center – specialists from the National Institute of Desert, Flora and Fauna of the Ministry of Nature Protection of Turkmenistan, representatives of scientific departments of state reserves, regional branches of nature protection, consultants on methodology of conducting trainings which successfully passed the training on “Training the instructors to the modern methods of training and developing study plans” that was held within the project implementation in November 2009.

In the course of the seminar international consultant talked about methods of capacity building it’s main levels such as system capacity, institutional capacity and capacity on individual level. As expert noted, in conducting trainings it is important to use different types of training depending on the target group. For example, in using traditional method of training experts decide themselves as what is required. The new approaches to capacity building focus more on the impact of training and more oriented to learning and not simply training. The expert also talked about methods which can be used to assess the effectiveness of the organized training.

Big attention at the seminar were given to the methods of identifying the needs for capacity building and assessment of needs for training when in the first instance the needs and goals of organization, gaps in competency is found out as well as personal development wishes of a specialist, monitoring and improvements are considered. In using this methodology each participant is given the list of necessary for his work skills, and each participant must assess the level of own competency.

As a result of the held training participants could improve their skills on developing training programs, better identify their target groups and use different approaches in conducting training and assess the effectiveness of the held training.